435 
P23 



THE NEBRASKA QUESTION. 



SOME THOUGHTS 



Udi) l^ssattlt itpu J'mtrom iit l^titnita, 



A N P THE 



GENERAL STATE OF THE COUNTRY 



IN RELATION THEREUNTO. 



SET FORTH IN A DISCOURSE PREACHED AT THE MUSIC 
HALL, IN BOSTON, ON MONDAY, FEB. 12, 1854. 



By THEODORE PARKER, 

Minister of the XXVni. Congregational Society in Boston. 



BOSTON: 
BENJAMIN B. MUSSED & CO 
1854. 




Class. 
Book 







I 



THE NEBRASKA QUESTION. 



•SOME THOUGHTS 



f flu l^ssault Mpu gxahm in '^wm'm, 



AND THE 



GENERAL STATE OF THE COUNTRY 



IN RELATION THEREUNTO, 



SET FORTH IN A DISCOURSE PREACHED AT THE MUSIC 
HALL, JN BOSTON, ON MONDAY, FEB. 12, 1854. 



By THEODOEE PARKER, 

Minister of the XXVni. Congregational Society in Boston. 



BOSTON: 
BENJAMIN B. MUSSEY Sc CO 
1854. 






boston: 

peess of prentiss and sawyer, 

No. 19 Water Street. 



DISCOURSE 



THE DARK PLACES OF THE EAUTH ARE FULL OF THE HABITATIONS OF 

CRUELTY. — Psalm, Ixxiv. 20. 

Before next Sunday it will be nine years since I 
first spokfe to you in this city, coming at your request. 
In the first discourse I spoke of the Necessity of Reli- 
gion for the Conduct of the Individual and the State. 
Since that time several crises have occurred in our 
national affairs which have led me to endeavor to apply 
the great principles of Religion to the political meas- 
ures of this nation. It is something more than a year 
since any such event has called for such treatment in 
this place. But now another assault has been made 
upon the liberty of man, in America, and so to-day I ask 
your attention to some Thoughts on the new Assault 
upon Freedom in America, and the general State of the 
Country in Relation thereunto. 

To comprehend the matter clearly, and the cause and 
the consequences of this special iniquity now contem- 
plated, we must begin far off and study the general 
course of human conduct in America, — the last new 
continent left as a stage for the development of man- 
kind. 



The transfer of the Anglo Saxon tribe to this Western 
continent is one of the most important events which has 
taken place in the last thousand years. Since the Pro- 
testant Reformation, which helped forward 'the ideas 
that were the banner of the march, nothing has proved 
so significant as the Westward movement of this swarm 
of men, not so much coming as driven out from the old 
close-pent European hive, and then settling down on 
the new continent. 

A few Romano-Celtic Frenchmen had already moored 
their venturous shallops in the American water, and 
pitched their military tents in what was else only the 
great wilderness of North America, roamed over by 
wild beasts and wild men, also the children of the 
woods. The Spanish tribe had come before either, and 
with military greediness were eating up the wealthy 
South. But Spain could set only a poor and perishing 
scion in the new world. That was always an evil tree to 
graft from, not producing good fruit. Besides, an old 
nation, in a state of decay, founds no healthy colonies. 
The children of a decomposing state, time worn and 
debauched, though with a whole continent before them 
— what could they accomplish for mankind ? They 
inherited the idleness, the ferocity, the military avarice, 
the superstition and heinous cruelty of a people never 
remarkable for any high traits of character. Two thou- 
sand years ago, the Celto-Iberic tribe mingled with the 
Roman ; then with the Visi-Goth, the Moor, the Jew — 
war proclaiming the savage nuptials, — and modern 
Spain is the issue of this six-fold juncture. This com- 
posite tribe of men had once some martial vigor ; nay, 
some commercial enterprise, but it has done little to 
advance mankind by the invention of new ideas, the 



organization thereof, or the administration of what 
others devised and organised ; the meanest and most 
cruel of the Christian nations, to-day she seems made 
but of the leavings of the world. To Columbus, adven- 
turous Italy's most venturous son, she gave, grudgingly, 
three miserable ships, wherewith that daring genius 
sailed through the classic and mediaeval darkness which 
covered the great Atlantic deep, opening to mankind a 
new world, and new destination therein. No Queen 
wore ever a diadem so precious as those pearls which 
Isabella dropped into the Western sea, a bridal gift 
whereby the Old World, well endowed with Art and 
Science, and the hoarded wealth of experience, wed 
America, rich only in her gifts from Nature and her 
hopes in time. The three most valuable contributions 
Spain has made to mankind are the Consolato del mare, 
the Barcelonian bud whence modern mercantile law has 
slowly blossomed forth ; the three scant ships a wealthy 
nation furnished to the Genoese navigator whom the 
world's instinct pushed Westward in quest of conti- 
nents ; and Don Quixote, a masterly satire on a form of 
foliy then old fashioned and fast getting extinct. These 
are the chief contributions Spain has dropped into the 
almsbox of the world. Coarse olives, huge onions, 
strong red wine — these are the offerings of the Span- 
ish mind in the world's fair of modern times. Since the 
days of Seneca and Lucan, perhaps Servetus is her fore- 
most man, fantastic minded yet rich in germs of fertile 
thought. 

Long before the Anglo Saxons, the Spaniard came to 
America ; greedy of money, hungering for reputation — 
the glory of the Gascon stock. He brought the proud 
but thin and sickly blood of a decaying tribe ; the tra- 



6 



ditionary institutions of the past — Theocracy, Mon- 
archy, Aristocracy, Despotocracy, the dominion of the 
master over the exploitered slave. He brought the 
mass-book and legends of unnatural saints, — the sym- 
bols of superstition and ecclesiastic tyranny ; the 
sword, — the last argument of Spanish kings, the 
symbol of military despotism ; fetters and the blood- 
hound. He brought no great ideas, new trees started 
in the old nursery of the past ; no noble sentiments, the 
seed-corn of ideal harvests yet to be. He shared only 
the material momentum of the human race which 
dashed his Eastern body on the Western world. He 
butchered the Indians who disbelieved " the Immaculate 
conception of our blessed Lady " as taught by men of 
most Titanic, all devouring lust. He set up the Inqui- 
sition, and soon had monks and nuns believing what 
heathen Guatemozin would have found bitterer than 
fire. The Spaniard attempted to found no institution 
which was an improvement on what he left behind — he 
reproduced only the Church, the State, the Community, 
and Family, of the middle-ages. He hated arts, letters, 
liberty ; even the mass of the people seem to care noth- 
ing for freedom of body or of mind. 

The Spaniard settled in the fairest parts of the new 
found land, amongst tribes already far advanced toward 
civilization — the world's foremost barbarians. He slew 
them with merciless rapacity; took their stone-built 
cities ; occupied their land better tilled than the gardens 
of Castile ; he seized their abundant gold ; stole their 
wives and their maidens. At home the people were 
wonted to bull-fights wherein the valiant Matador risks 
his own worthless body, and to Autos da Fe where the 
cowardly priests burn their free-thinking sister without 



hazarding their own nuisance of a life ; in America the 
Spaniard rioted in the murder of men. The pictured 
horrors of De Bry report only a drop of the blood so 
torturously shed 3 yet two hundred and fifty years ago 
they terrified all Europe — Latin, German, French;, 
English, Dutch. 

To America, Spain transferred the superstition and 
tyranny of medii^val Europe, its four-fold despotism, — 
ecclesiastical, political, social, domestic. She re-invented 
Negro Slavery. Six thousand years ago, before the 
"flood," yea before mythological Cain had been conceived 
by a Hebrew head, Egypt, it seems, was guilty of this 
crime. In the middle ages Negro-Slavery w^as an art 
well nigh lost. Spain, first of the Christian nations, en- 
forced religion with the knife, and beheaded men for 
heresy ; she rolled the Inquisition as a sweet morsel 
under her tongue ; her sovereigns, Avho extinguished the 
brand which smoked on the national hearth yet warm 
with Gothic liberty, who butchered the Moors and ban- 
ished the plundered Jews, were for such service styled 
"the Catholic!" Spain re-annexed Negro Slavery to 
herself, and therewith stained the soil of America. 
Therein she broke not the continuity of her history, the 
succession of rapine, piracy, cruel outpouring of blood. 
Not Italian Columbus, but Iberian Cortes and Pizarro, 
were the types of Spain ; not Las Casas, but Torque- 
mada. 

Behold now the condition of Spanish America. Its 
most flourising part is an empire, with the house of 
Braganza at its head — an imitation of the old world, 
a despotism throned on bayonets. There are two em- 
pires in Tropic America — Hayti and Brazil ; the fore- 
most tradition of Africa, the hindmost of Europe set 



8 



down on American soil. The Negro empire appears 
the most successful, the most promising. There alone 
is no hereditary slavery. Over Cuba, France and Eng- 
land still hold up the feeble hands of Spain — whence 
at last freedom seems dropping into the Slave's expec- 
tant lap. The rest of Spanish America has the form of 
a republic — a republic whose only permanent constitu- 
tion is a Cartridge-box, which blows up once a year. 
Look at Mexico — I am glad she is going swiftly back 
to the form of despotism ; she is capable of no other 
reality. How the Western vultures fly thitherward! 
Where the carcass of a nation rots there will the filli- 
busters be gathered together. Every raven in the hun- 
gry flock of American politicians looks that way, wipes 
his greedy beak, prunes his wings, and screams " Mani- 
fest Destiny ! " 

In South America there are ten " Republics." They 
cover three and a half millions of square miles, and con- 
tain twelve million men. But they do less for mankind 
than Holland ; nay, Basil and Zurich do more for the 
human race than these " Republics," which only blot the 
continent. No Idea is cradled in Spanish America ; no 
books are written there ; none read but books of " Devo- 
tion," which Ignorance long since wrote. Old Spain 
imports from France the filthiest novels of the age ; new 
Spain only the yet more deadly books of Catholic " De- 
votion." The "laws" of the Chilian "Republic" are 
printed in Spain, where no Chilian ship ever sailed. 
The Amazon has eighty thousand miles of navigable 
water, — near a hundred thousand, say some ; the sur- 
vey is conjectural, — and drains into the lap of America, 
a tropic basin, the largest, the richest on the globe, with 
more good land than all Europe owns ; therein streams 



larger than the Danube discharge theu^ freight. But 
only a single steamer disturbs the alligator on its 
mighty breast — that steamer built and owned at New 
York. Para at its mouth is more than three hundred 
years old, yet has not twenty thousand souls. If the 
South American " Republics " were to perish this day, 
the world would hardly lose a valuable experiment in 
Spanish political or social life, hardly a visible promise 
of future prosperity ; so badly flourish the Spanish scions 
set in the green soil of America, and surrounded by the 
old institutions of the middle ages. Slavery is the one 
idea of the Spanish tribes — here African, there Indian 
or Caucasian. 

One hundred and thirty years after Genoese Colum- 
bus had planted the Spanish Cross in the new world — 
sword in hand and splendidly arrayed, — from a little 
vessel, leaky, and with a " wrack in the main beam 
amidships," the Anglo Saxons dropped their anchor in 
Massachusetts bay, circled then with savage woods; 
they drew up a " compact," chose their " Governor " for 
one year, rested and worshipped on Sunday, the next 
day landed at " New Plymouth," thanking God. They 
came, a slip from a young tree full of hardy life. Four 
stout roots — Angle, Saxon, Danish, Norman, — united 
their old fantastic twists and joined in this one tough 
and rugged stem, then quadruply buttressed below, 
now how widely branched abroad in every climate of 
the world! Fresh blood was in those Anglo-Saxon 
veins ; strong, red, heathen blood, not long before inocu- 
lated with Christianity which yet took most kindly in 
aU Teutonic veins. 

These Pilgrims had in them the ethnologic idio- 



10 



syncracy of the Anglo Saxon — his restless disposition 
to invade and conquer other lands ; his haughty con- 
tempt of humbler tribes, ^Thich leads him to subvert, 
enslave, kill and exterminate ; his fondness for material 
things, preferring use to beaut}^ ; his love of personal 
liberty, yet coupled with most profound respect for 
peaceful and established law ; his inborn skill to organ- 
ize things to a mill, men to a company, a communify, 
tribes to a federated state ; and his slow, solemn, inflex- 
ible, industrious, and unconquerable will. 

They brought with them much of the tradition of the 
human race, the guidings and warnings of experience ; 
a great deal of superstition, of tyranny not a little, — 
ecclesiastical, political, social, domestic. They brought 
the sword, — that symbol of military despotism must 
yet fight on freedom's side ; but they loved better the 
axe, the wooden shovel — the best they had, — the 
plough, the swine, the ox, tools of productive industrial 
civilization, types of toil and cooperative freedom. 
For the Mass-Book they had the Bible : it was a iiee 
Bible ; let him read that listeth. No doubt the Bible 
contained the imperfection of the men and ages con- 
cerned in writing it. The hay tastes of the meadow 
where it grew, of the weather when it was made, and 
smells of the barn wherein it has been kept ; nay the 
breath of the oxen housed underneath comes doAvn to 
market in every load. But in its many-colored leaves, 
the Bible likewise holds the words of great men, free 
and making free ; it was full of the old blossoms of 
piety, and rich in buds for new and glorious life, aye, 
and beauty too. The cup of prophets mainly, not of 
priests, it ran over with w^ater of life from the mytholo- 
gic well in the wilderness and Bethesda's pool which 



11 



angels stirred to healing power ; — it gave men vigor- 
ous strength and hardy life. Instead of the bloodhound, 
the Pilgrims sent the school-master to his work ; — they 
put their fetters on the little streams that run among 
the hills, and those river-gods must saw, and grind, and 
spin for mortal men; not the Inquisition, but the Prmt- 
ing Press, was the type and symbol of this Northern 

work. 

They had the traditions of the human race, but also 
its momentum acquired in the movement of many a 
thousand years. They brought the best political insti- 
tutions the world had then known. They had the 
English Common Law,— which had slowly got erected 
in the practice of this liberty-loving people, its Cyclo- 
pean Walls built up by the Lesbian rule,— with its forms 
and precedents, its methodical schemes of procedure, 
itself a popular judicium rusticum ; they had the habit 
of local self-government; the right — though then not 
well understood — of popular legislation, also founded 
in immemorial usage ; dim notions and the certain prac- 
tice of representative government — the Democracy of 
Law-making; the trial by Jury -the Democracy of 
Law-administration. They brought Congregational 
Protestantism — the Democracy of Christianity, involv- 
ing, what they neither granted nor knew, the umversal 
ri^ht of search for truth and justice, the natural right 
to°take or reject, as a man's own spirit should 
require. 

Besides the organised institutions — visible as tools 
of industry or politics, or invisible in literature, science, 
settled and admitted principles of private morality or 
of public law, — which represent the history and 
achievements of mankind, they brought also Ideas not 



12 



organised in either form of institution, and sentiments 
not yet translated into conscious thought. These 
represented man's natural instinct of progress and the 
momentum he had gained in history ; they were to 
become institutions and facts in future time. 

When the Puritan founded his colonies in New Eng- 
land, there were other Anglo-Saxon settlements on the 
Atlantic Coast. Jamestown was founded in 1607. 
Other settlements folloATed. The same Anglo-Saxon 
blood flowed South as well as North ; the same tradi- 
tions and institutions were with both. But the Anglo 
Saxons North brought intentions, ide s and feelings 
quite unlike those of their Southern fellows ; the motive 
for immigrating was altogether unlike. New England 
was a religious colony, — mainly composed of perse- 
cuted men who fled Westward because they had ideas 
which could not be set up in the Eastern woild. Thrice 
the Mayflower crossed the sea, coming to Plymouth, to 
Salem, to Boston ; each time bringing veritable Pilgrims 
who came from a religious motive, and sought religious 
ends. This was likewise the case with the primitive 
settlers of Pennsylvania. The South was not settled by 
religious colonies. The ytrimitive dilTerence in the seed 
has continually appeared in the growth thence accruing; 
in the policy and the character of the South and North. 
The same year which brought the Puritan Pilgrims to 
New England bore a quite difterent freight to Virginia. 
In 1620, a Dutch captain carried thither some twenty 
Africans who were sold as Slaves into perpetual bond- 
age — themselves and their children. Thus the old sin 
of Egypt, half omitted and half forgotten in classic and 
mediaeval times, re-discovered by the Spaniards, and 



13 

fixed by despots, — a loathly plague-spot — on the tropic 
regions of America, was brought North, adopted by the 
Anglo Saxons of the South, and set a-going at James- 
town. It excited no astonishment. All the " Christian " 
world then sold prisoners of war for Slaves. Thus early 
did Negro Slavery become an " institution" of the South. 

But all things are double : in the Anglo-Saxon North 
there were two contending elements. One represented 
old institutions, and wished to stop therewith. It loved 
dcspotocracy in the family, aristocracy in the commu- 
nity, monarchy in the state, and theocracy in the 
church : it opposed the natural human rights of the 
servant in the famil}^, of the laborer in the community, 
of the people in the state, of the layman in the church ; 
it favored the rule of the master, the lord, the king, the 
priest. This element was old, ancestral, stationary if 
not retrogressive; it was also powerful. In this the 
Anglo-Saxon and the Spaniard were alike. 

The other element was the instinct for progressive 
development; the Sentiments not idealised into con- 
scious thoughts ; the Ideas not organised into institu- 
tions. There was a feeling of the equality of all men 
in the substance of their human nature, and conse- 
quently in all natural rights, howsoever diverse in natural 
powers, in transmitted distinction and riches, or in ac- 
quired ctilture, money, and station. Now and then this 
feeling had broken out in a " Jack Cade's insurrection," 
or a " Peasant's war." But in the seventeenth century 
it found no distinct expression as a thought Per- 
haps it was not an idea with any man a hundred and 
fifty years ago ; it was the stuff ideas are made of. 
What other feelings are there, one day to become ideas, 



14 



then acts, the world's victorious life ! Lay down your 
ear to the great ocean of humanity, and as the spirit 
of God moves on the face of this deep, listen to the 
low tone of the great ground-swell, and interpret the 
ripple at the bottom of the sea while, all above, the 
surface is calm as a maiden's dreamless sleep. In these 
days, what is it that we hear at the bottom of the world 
as the eternal tide of human history meets with the 
sand bars cast down in many an ancient storm ! Thereof 
will I speak not now. 

This feeling came slowly to an idea. With many 
stumblings and wanderings it went forth, blindfold as 
are all the instinctive feelings — whereunto only God 
not man is Eye, — not knowing whither it went or even 
intended to go. See what has been done, or at least 
commenced. 

I. They protested against Theocracy in the church. 
" Let us have a church without an altar or a Bishop ; 
a service with no mass-book, no organ, no surplice, 
each congregation subject only to the Lord, not to 
man," said the Puritan — and he had it : " Yea," an- 
swered the Quaker, " and with no hireling minister, no 
outward sacrament, no formal prayer of words ; the 
church is they that love the Lord; it takes all the 
church to preach all the gospel, and without that cannot 
all mankind be saved ! " " No vicarious sprinkling of 
babies, but the voluntary plunging of men," cried the 
Anabaptist. Thereat the theocratic Puritan lifted his 
hands and scourged the Baptist and smote the Quaker 
stone dead. But the palm tree of toleration sprang out 
of Mary Dyer's grave. The theocracy got routed in 
many a well-contested fight ; in the city of the Puritans, 



15 



the Catholic, the Quaker, the Anabaptist, the Jew, and 
the Unitarian may worship or worship not, just as they 
will. But this fight is not over ; yet it is plain how 
the battle is going. The Theocracy is doomed to the 
cave of Pope and Pagan. Let us give it our blessing 

— as it goes. The Puritan fled from Episcopal Eng- 
land to tolerant Holland, to the wilderness of America. 
But he brought more than Puritanism along with him, 

— Humanity came in the same ship. The great war- 
fare for the right of man's nature to transcend all the 
accidents of his history, began in the name of religion 

— the instinct whereunto is the deepest in us, the in- 
nermost kernel and germinal dot in the human spirit ; 
Luther's hammer shook the world. During mid-winter, 
in Switzerland, when the snow overhangs heavily from 
every chff, if the traveller but clap his hands and shout 
aloud, the mountains answer with an avalanche. When 
Martin lifted up his voice amid the mediaeval snows of 
Europe, half Christendom came down in that great land- 
slip of churches. Other snows have since fallen ; other 
voices will be lifted up ; other church-slides will follow 

— for every mountain shall be levelled, and the valleys 
filled. The Bible took the place of the Mass-book, the 
minister of the priest, the independent society of the 
Papal church. The glorious liberty of the children of 
God is to be the final result for all. 

11. Next came the protest against Monarchy. The 
Anglo Saxons never loved single-headed, absolute des- 
potism. How the barons fought against it ! But it 
was left for "His Majesty's faithful Commons" to do 
the work. The dreadful axe of Puritanic Oliver Crom- 
well shore olf the divine right of kings, maldng a clean 



16 



cut between the vicarious government of the middle 
ages, and the personal self-rule of modern times. On 
the 30th of January, 1648, the executioner held up 
the head of Charles I. with a " Behold the Head of a 
Traitor," and " Royalty disappeared in front of White- 
hall : " a ghastly, dreadful sight. Peasant Luther pushed 
the Latin Mass-book aside with his German Bible, say- 
ing, ^^ Thus I break the succession of the Priests." 
With his sword Cromwell, the brewer, pushed aside 
the Crown of England, " Thus I break the succession 
of Kings." 

New England loved Cromwell, and while dwelling in 
the wilderness exercised th^ rights of sovereignty many 
times before it was known what she did, both destroy- 
ing and building, — as likewise do all of us, — greater 
and wiser than she knew. Luther's hammer broke also 
the neck of kings, who disappear, and in their place 
came up governors and presidents not born to adverse 
rule, but voted in for official service. 

III. Then came the protest against Aristocracy. 
God made men not in classes but as individuals — each 
man a person with all the substantive rights of hu- 
manity : the same law must serve for all ; all must be 
equal before it and the social institutions of the com- 
munity. That was the dim utterance of many a man 
who grumbled in his beard : 

" When Adam delved and Eve span 
Where was then the gentleman ? " 

How idly they dreamed — looking back for the Para- 
dise that lay before them ! But between it and them 
Pison, Gihon, Hiddekel, and a fourth stream, nameless 



17 



as yefc, rolled torrents of blood ; and a fiery sword of 
selfishness turned every way to keep men from the 
Tree of Life, whose very leaves are for the healing of 
the nations — could they but get to it. Could they — 
aye ! Can they not ? 

Little by little, man's nature prevailed over Aris- 
tocracy, one accident of his development. The Anglo 
Saxon Briton had restricted the Nobility he brought with 
him from the Continent ; — only the eldest son inherits 
his father's land, title, and rank, the later-born all conir- 
moners. The Anglo Saxon American broke up Primo- 
geniture : the children are equal in blood and rank ; 
the first son has no more* of his father in him than the 
last ; all must share equally in his goods. Rank is not 
heritable. If a coward, the Captain's son is no Captain ; 
by human substance, eminent manhood, bravery, skill, 
is the new man made Captain ; not by the historic 
accident of legitimate descent from an old Captain. 
To be born well is to be well born ; tall men are of 
a high family. The corporal's child, yea, the sons of 
Rank and File, are also men. In the woods of Nature, 
new humanity takes precedence of all the artificial dis- 
tinctions of old time. The crime of the fiither must 
work no attainder in the baby's blood ; by the sour 
grapes of his own eating only shall a man's teeth be set 
on edge. Estates must not be entailed in perpetuity. 
Land must be held in fee simple, with no quit-rents, or 
other servitudes of vassalage ; on terms which all can 
understand. The vicarious land-tenures of the Middle 
Ages are forever broken. All men may hold land ; and 
clieaply convey it to whom they will. For the first 
time the majority have a stake in the public hedge ; the 
mediaeval " Noble," the conventional " Gentleman " grad^- 
2 



18 



ually withdraws and moves out from New England. " It 
is not a good place for Gentlemen," so a governor wrote 
two hundred years ago. Everybody is " Mr. " ; then 
" Esquire." The born magistrate vanishes, the " Select 
Men " are annually voted in. Still the social aristoc- 
racy bottomed on accident, is far from being ended. But 
it rests no longer on the immovable accident of birth, 
but on the changeable block of money, and like that 
can be struggled for and acquired by all. It rests on 
golden sands, or fickle votes. 

IV. There yet remams the protest against Despot- 
ocracy — the adverse rule of the master over the servant, 
the hostile subordination of the weak to the strong in 
the family. In a military despotism, war confers dig- 
nity : " it is the part of a man to fight," says Homer ; 
" of a slave to work," and they " who exercise lordship 
are called Benefactors." In a Theocracy, the priest is 
a sacred person: his work is '-divine service," he enters 
the temple ; but the people are profane, and must stand 
without ; their Avork is menial ! In a Theocracy, Mon- 
archy, Aristocracy — founded and maintained by vio- 
lence or cunning — labor is thought degrading ; the 
laborer is for the state, not it also for him. This exploit- 
ering of the weak by the strong belongs to the essence 
of those three institutions. Domestic Slavery coheres 
therewith, and in dark ages this adverse rule of the 
strong over the weak appears in all the collective action 
of men — ecclesiastical, political, social, domestic ; the 
God, the King, the Noble, the Master, the husband, the 
father, — all are tyi-ants; all rule is despotism — the 
strong for his interest coercing the weak against theirs. 
In such a soil, Slavery is at home, and grows rank and 
strong. 



i9 

But in an industrial community, with a printed Bible 
bought by the Parish and belonging thereunto ; Avith 
a minister chosen by the laymen's votes, ordained by 
their hands, paid by their free-will offerings, nay, edu- 
cated, perhaps, by their charity, criticised by their judg- 
ment, removable at their will ; with a creed voted in by 
the congregation — and voted out when they change 
their mind ; with no monarch ruling by divine right, 
but only a Governor chosen by the people at their an- 
nual meeting ; with no " Nobles," no " Gentlemen," but 
an elected assembly, a general court, — sworn on a con- 
stitution made by the people, — democratically making 
laws ; with magistrates chosen by the people, or respon- 
sible thereto ; with democratic trial by jury for all men ; 
with the idea that a man's nature is before all the acci- 
dents of his ancestry or estate — the old domestic Des- 
potocracy must gradually become impossible. Labor 
will be thought honorable — idleness a disgrace. Pro- 
ductive activity will be deemed a glory, and riches, its 
result, the greatest of all mere outside and personal 
distinctions. The tools must be for whoso can handle 
them. So the threefold movement, destroying the triple 
tyranny already mentioned, must presently achieve the 
emancipation of man from all personal servitude and 
domestic subordination : the substance of man must be 
inaugurated above the accidents of his history. This 
must be done not only in the Church, the State, the 
Community, but also in the Family. It must set the 
bond-man free. If the Church, State, and Community 
rest on natural Law, so likewise must the Family as 

^vell. 

To accomplish this, two things were needful. This 

■was the first. 



20 



1. To affirm as a principle and establish in measures 
the idea that all Men, rich and poor, strong and weak, 
are equal in all their natural rights ; that as the accident 
of birth makes no man Priest, King, or Noble, with a 
right, thence derived, to rule over men against their 
will in the Church, State, or Community ; so the acci- 
dent of superior power gives no naan a right in the Fam- 
ily to hold others in bondage and subordination, for his 
advantage and against theirs. It is only to admit that 
all are Men, for manhood carries all human rights with 
it, as land the crops, and the substance its primary quali- 
ties. It seems a small thing to do ; — especially for 
men able, to dispense and make way with the other 
mediaeval forms of vicarious rule — theocracy, mon- 
archy, and aristocracy. How easy it seemed to inaugu- 
rate personality and individualism in the family ! But 
as matters were, this was the most difficult thing of all. 
For the Priests, the Kings, the Nobles did not come over 
— only the tradition thereof, and the habit of subordina- 
tion thereto, with a few feeble scions of the sacerdotal, 
royal, and noble stocks — and preaching against these 
always was popular, — while the Masters came over in 
large numbers, bringing their slaves. They brought the 
substance of Despotocracy along with them, not merely 
its tradition. To preach against that was always a 
" sin " to the American Church. But Man wants unity 
of consciousness. Accordingly, in New England good 
men began early to feel that absolute and perpetual 
Slavery was a wicked thing. Had not the letter of the 
Old Testament and of certain passages in the New been 
before their eyes, I think the Puritan would have seen 
more clearly than he did see. Still, with so much of 
the spirit of the Old Testament in him, he could not but 



21 

see it was wrong to steal men for the purpose of making 
them Slaves and their children after them. So Slavery- 
was always a contradiction in the consciousness of New 
England. The white Slaves became free on expiration 
of their term of service, or were set free before. There 
were many such. The red men would not work — and 
were let alone, or quietly shot down. The Indians 
killed the white man and scalped him; the Puritan 
omitted the scalping — it was not worth his while ; the 
scalp was of no use. 

The Slavery of the Blacks never prevailed extensive- 
ly in New England. It was not found very profitable. 
True it prevailed : it had the laws and the tradition of 
the elders on its side. But it was yet felt, known, and 
confessed to be at variance with the ecclesiastical, polit- 
ical, and social ideas of the people. There was always 
a good deal of conscience in New England. The reli- 
gious origin of the first colonies is not yet a forgotten 
fact. The Puritan still looked up to a Higher Law. 
Did he keep his powder dry ? He also trusted in God. 
Coveting the end, he looked for the means thereto. 
The gain from the compulsory labor of the African Slave 
was not motive enough to keep up the contradiction in 
the New England consciousness. So before the Revo- 
lution this institution was much weakened, and with 
that disappeared from New England; and soon after 
vanished out of all the States which she bore or 
taught. 

2. The other thing was to affirm as a principle and 
establish as a measure the natural equality of Men and 
Women in all that pertained to human rights. It was 
only to afiarm that Woman is human, and has the same 



22 



quality of human substance Tvitli man. If difference in 
condition, as rich and poor, or ability, as strong or 
■weak, does not affect tlie substance of manhood, and the 
rights thence accruing, no more does difference of sex, 
masculine or feminine, make one master, and the other 
slave. Not only the proletar}^, the servant, the slave, 
but exploitered woman also mus^ rise as despotocracy 
goes down. 

In the Southern part of the North American Conti- 
nent, other Anglo Saxon colonies got planted and grew 
up. None of them was a religious settlement; the 
immigrants came not for the sake of an idea too new 
or too great for toleration at home. They came as 
Adventurers, seeking their fortune ; not as Pilgrims, to 
found the "Kingdom of Heaven on Earth." The 
Southern Settlers had not the New England hostility to 
mediaeval institutions. Theocracy, Monarchy, Aristoc- 
racy, were not so unwelcome further South. In 1671, 
the Governor of Virginia said that she " had no free 
schools nor printing press. Learning has brought 
disobedience and heresy and sects into the world, and 
printing has divulged them, and libels against the best 
governments. God keep us from both ! " Despotocracy 
had its home in the Southern States. African Slavery 
came to Virginia in the same year which brought the 
Pilgrims to Plymouth. It suited the idleness of the 
self-indidgent master, and became an institution fixed 
and beloved in the Southern colonies, so diverse in 
their ideas from the stern but bigoted North. Still the 
ideas of the age found their way to these colonies — 
and led to acts. There also was a protest against the- 
ocracy, monarchy, aristocracy, and even against despot- 



23 



ocracy. Mutuality of origin, community of position — 
that is all the Northern and Southern colonies at first 
had in common. Sentiments, ideas, institutions were 
quite diverse. By and by a little trade helped unite 
the two. The South wanted Slaves. The North — 
especially Rhode Island — overcame its scruples, and, 
spite of the Old Testament, stole men in Africa to sell 
them at enormous profit in the colonies of the South. 

This great human protest against that four-fold des- 
potism continually went on — no man understanding 
the great battle between the substance of man's pro- 
gressive nature and the stationary institutions which 
were the accidents of his history. At length, things 
came to such a pass that connection between new Amer- 
ica and old England could not be borne. Between the 
Old and the New there had ceased to be that mutuality 
of Sentiment and Idea which makes unity of institu- 
tions and unity of action possible. The Daughter was 
too strong to bear patiently the dictation and the yoke 
of her parent ; the Mother was too distant and too fee- 
ble to enforce her selfish commands. 

America published to the world a part of the new 
ideas which lay in her mind. The Declaration of Inde- 
pendence contained the American Programme of Politi- 
cal Principles. The motive thereto is to be found in 
the general human instinct for progress, but more espe- 
cially in the old Teutonic spirit, the love of individual 
liberty, which has marked the ancient Germans, and 
still more eminently their Anglo Saxon descendants, as 
well in Christian as in Heathen times. The form of 
speech — self-evident maxims, universal truths resting 
on the consciousness of mankind — seems derived from 



24 



European writers on Natural Law ; the influence of con- 
tinental free-thinkers is obvious therein. But the first 
express declaration, that there are natural, unalienable 
Rights in man, seems to have been made a few years 
before, in New England, in Boston. Is it here thought 
an honor to the town ? — Nay, perhaps a disgrace ! 

Here is the American Programme of Political Prin- 
ciples : All men are endowed by their Creator with 
certain natural Rights ; these Rights can be alienated 
only by the possessor thereof; in respect thereto all 
men are equal ; amongst them are the Right to Life, 
Liberty, and the Pursuit of Happiness ; it is the func- 
tion of government to preserve all these natural, un- 
alienable, and equal Rights for each man ; government 
is amenable to the people, deriving its sanction from the 
consent of the governed. 

In time of peace the thirteen distinct colonies could 
not have united in that Declaration of Principles. The 
political ideal was a severe criticism on the actual legis- 
lation of the Americans. Talk of natural law and equal 
rights when every colony held Slaves in perpetual 
bondage ! When the North stole men in Africa to sell 
them in Carolina ! But America was then in her agony 
and bloody sweat. European Despotism was the Angel 
which strengthened her. External violence pressed the 
colonies together into a Confederation of States ; that 
alone gave unity of action when there was no unity of 
humane sentiment or political idea. The union was 
only military — for defence. 

The New conquered ; but the Old did not die. Not 
every Tory went over to the British side. After the 
war was over, the nation must organise itself on that 
new Platform of Principles. But, alas, much of the old 



25 



selfishness remained — theocratic, monarchic, aristocratic, 
and still more despotocratic ; it would appear in the new 
government. There was no real unity of Idea between 
the extreme South and the North, between Carolina and 
Connecticut. Nothing is done by leaps. In organising 
the Independence won in battle, the People proclaimed 
their Programme of Political Purpose. It is the Pre- 
amble to the Constitution : " To form a more perfect 
Union, establish Justice, ensure domestic Tranquillity, 
provide for the common Defence, promote the general 
Welfare, and secure the Blessings of Liberty." The 
Purpose was as noble as the Principles. But the means 
to that end, the Constitution itself, is by no means 
unitary ; it is a provisional compromise between the 
ideal political Princij>les of the Declaration, and the 
actual selfishness of the people North and South ; it is 
a measure which did not so much suit the ideal Bight, 
as it favored one great actual tyranny. National the- 
ocracy was given up. How could the Americans allow 
a " national religion ? " Monarchy went also to the 
ground ; the Puritan bosom that bore Cromwell — 

" Would have brooked 
Th' eternal Devil to keep his state .... 
As easily as King." 

Aristocracy found more favor, but likewise perished; 
" no title of nobility shall be granted ; " honors are not 
devisable. Despotocracy, the worst institution of the 
middle ages — the leprosy of society — came over the 
water: the Slave survived the Priest, the Noble, the 
King. Must the axe of a more terrible Cromwell 
shear that also away ? Shall it be a black Cromwell ? 
History points to St. Domingo. The Future also has 



26 



much to teach us. The Declaration of Principles and 
of Purposes would annihilate Slavery ; the Constitution 
nowhere forbids it, but broods over that egg which 
savage selfishness once laid. How could the liberty- 
loving North join with Carohna, which rejoiced to 
fetter men ? The unity of action was no longer mili- 
tary — it was commercial, union for trade. Thus the 
Idea of America became an Act ! 

The truths of the Declaration went abroad to do 
their work. The French Revolution followed with its 
wide-reaching consequences, so beneficial to mankind ; 
it still goes on. The ground swell has come near the 
surface, and all the European sea now foams with 
tumult. Foreign opposition withdrew; America was 
left to herself, the sole republic of the world, with 
the wilderness for her stage and scene, and her 
great ideas for plot. The two antagonistic elements, 
the old selfishness which loves those four traditions of 
the past, the new benevolent instinct of progress which 
seeks the development of all man's nobler powers, were 
to fight their battle, while with hope and fear the world 
looks on. The New World has now broken with' the 
old — once and forever. 

The peculiar characteristics of the Anglo Saxon 
appear now more prominent in the American than in 
the Britons; yet he is not altered, only developed. 
The love of individual liberty triumphs continually ; the 
white man becomes more democratic — in Church, 
State, Community, and Family. The invasive character 
appears in the individual and national lust for land, and 
our rapid geographic spread. Materialism shows itself 
in the swift growth of covetousness, in the concentration 
of the talent and genius of the nation upon the acqui- 



21 



sition of ric^ies. The power to organize things and men 
comes out in the machines, ships, and mills, in little and 
great confederations, from a lyceum to the Federal 
Union of thirty-one States. The natural exclusiveness 
appears in the extermination of the red man, in the 
enslavement of the black man, in the contempt with 
which he is treated — turned out of the tavern, the 
church, and the graveyard. The lack of high qualities 
of mind is shown in the poverty of American literature, 
the meanness of American religion, in the neglect and 
continual violation of the idea set forth in our national 
programme of Principles and Purpose. Since the 
Revolution, the immediate aim of America appears to 
have changed. 

At first, during the period of America's colonization 
and her controversy with England, and her affirmation 
and establishment of her progi-amme of political princi- 
ples, — the great national work of the disunited prov- 
inces was a struggle for local self-government against 
despotic centralization beyond the sea. It was an 
effort against the vicarious rule of the middle ages, 
which allowed the people no power in the State, the 
laity none in the Church, the servant none in the 
family. It was a great effort — mainly unconscious — 
in favor of the direct government of each State by 
itself, of the whole people by the whole people; a 
national protest against Theocracy, — the subordi- 
nation of man in religious affairs to the accident of his 
history; Monarchy, the subordination of the mass of 
men to a single man; Aristocracy, the subordination 
of the many to the few, of the weak to the strong ; yes, 
in part also against Despotocracy, the subordination of 
the slave who toils to the master that enjoys, — in their 



28 



rights they were equal. This forced men to look inward 
at the natural rights of man ; outward at the general 
development thereof in history. It led to the attempt 
to establish a Democracy, which, so far as Measures are 
concerned, is the government of all, for all, by all ; so 
far as moral Principle is concerned, it is the enactment 
of God's Justice into human laws. There was a strug- 
gle of the many against the few ; for man's nature, with 
its instinct of progressive and perpetual development, 
against the accidents of man's history. It was an effort 
to establish the eternal law of God against the provi- 
sional caprice of tyrants. I do not mean to say that 
these great purposes and ideas existed consciously in 
the minds of men. They were in men's character, not 
in their convictions ; they came out in their life more 
than in their speech. They were in men as botany is 
in this plant, as chemistry in this drop of water, as 
gravitation which rounds it to a globe and brings it to 
the ground. But the camelia knows not the botany it 
lives ; the drop of water knows nothing of the chemis- 
try which has formed it, arranging its particles " by 
number and measure and weight ; " it knows not the 
gravitation which brings it to the ground. So it was 
the great soul of humanity that stirred in our fathers' 
heart ; it was the Providence of God working by the 
men who formed the State. 

From 1620 to 1788 there was a rapid development 
of ideas. But since that time the outward pressure has 
been withdrawn. The nation is no longer called to 
protest against a foreign foe ; no despot forces us to 
fall back on the great principles of human nature, and 
declare great universal truths. Even the Anglo Saxon 
people are always metaphysical in revolution. We 



29 



have ceased to be such, and have become material. We 
have let the programme of political principles and pur- 
poses slip out of the nation's consciousness, and have 
betaken ourselves, body and soul to the creation of 
riches. Wealth is the great object of American desire. 
Covetousness is the American passion. This is so — 
nationally in the poHtical affairs of the country ; eccle- 
siastically, socially, domestically, individually. Our 
national character, political institutions, geographic 
situation, — all favor the accumulation of riches. I 
thank God that we are thus rich ! 

No country was ever so rich before, nor got rich so 
fast ; in none had wealth ever such power, or was so 
esteemed. It is counted as the end of life, not as the 
material basis to higher forms thereof. It has no con- 
ventional check in the institutions of the land, and only 
two natural checks in the heart of the people. One is 
the talent and genius — intellectual, moral, alTectional, 
and religious — that is born in rare men ; and the other 
is the desire, the caprice, the opinion, of the great ma- 
jority of men, who oppose their collective human will 
against the material glitter of mere accumulated money. 
But money can buy intellectual talent and intellectual 
genius ; at least it can buy American talent and Amer- 
ican genius. Money, and the men of cultivated minds 
whom it buys, can deceive the people, so that the ma- 
jority shall follow the dollar wherever it rolls. The 
clink of the dollar, — that is the reveille, the morning 
drum-beat, for the American people. In America, 
money is inaugurated as a l power to control all other 
powers. It has itself become an " Institution "— mas- 
ter of all the rest. 

Three of those bad institutions that I named, whereof 



30 



our fathers brought the traditions from the old world, 
have mainly perished. The mediaeval Theocracy has 
gone cut from the Protestant Church ; Monarchy has 
wholly faded from the consciousness of the people ; 
Aristocracy, sitting unmovable on her cradle, has had 
her heart pierced through and through by the gigantic 
spear of American Industry horsed on a steam-engine. 
Money has taken the place of all three. It has get 
inaugurated into the Church, — it is a Church of com- 
merce ; in the State — it is a state of commerce ; in 
the Community not less, — it is a society of commerce ; 
and money wields the triple power of those three old 
masters. Theocracy, Monarchy, Aristocracy. It is the 
Almighty Dollar. 

In the American Church, money is God. The pecu- 
liar sins of- money, and of the rich, they are never 
preached against ; it is a Church of commerce, wealth 
its heaven and the millionaire its saint ; its ministers 
should be ordained, not '^ by the imposition of hands," 
but of bank bills — of small denomination. In the 
American State, money is the Constitution : officers 
ought to be sworn on the federal currency ; they should 
make the sign of the dollar, ($) as their official symbolic 
cross ; it is a State of commerce. In the community, 
money is Nobility ; it is transmissable social power ; it 
is Aristocracy, it makes a man who has got it a vulgar 
" gentleman ; " it is a Society of commerce. Nay, in 
the family, money is thought better than love, and the 
daughter who fascinates and coaxes, and courts and 
weds a bag of gold, gets the approbation of her mother 
and her father's benediction, "Many daughters have 
done virtuously, but thou excellest them all." 

•" None but the rich deserve the fair." 



31 



The fourth bad institution whose tradition our fathers 
brought, Despotocracy, the rule of the master over the 
slave whom he exploiters, — that has not yet shared the 
fate of Theocracy, Monarchy, and Aristocracy. It is 
still preserved ; it leagues itself with money, and builds 
up anew in America the old corrupt family of the mid- 
dle ages. In New York, it clothes the white flunkeys of 
the Hon. Dives Gotrich with an imitated livery ; in New 
Orleans, and in more than half the land, it takes those 
whom Nature has clothed in a sable livery, and makes 
them its slaves. Despotocracy alone could not accom- 
plish this. The wickedness is foreign to the American 
Idea of a state, a community, or a church. But leaguing 
with money, which has taken the place of all those old 
institutions, it is this day the strongest power in the 
nation. 

Money having taken the place of these three insti- 
tutions, it must be politically represented in the nation 
by a party : for a party is the provisional organization of 
a tendency. So there is a party, organized about the 
Dollar as its central nucleus and idea. The dollar is 
the germinal dot of the Whig party; its motive is 
pecuniary ; its motto should be, to state it in Latin, 
pecunia pecimiata, money monied, money made. It 
sneers at the poor ; at the many ; has a contempt for 
the people. It legislates against the poor, and for the 
rich ; that is, for men pecuniarily strong ; the few who 
are born with the desire, the talent, and the conventional 
position to become rich. " Take care of the rich, and 
they will take care of the poor," is its secret maxim. 
Everything must yieM to money : that is to have uni- 
versal right of way. Down with Mankind ! the Dollar is 



32 



coming ! The great domestic object of Government, said 
the greatest Expounder of this party, " is the protection 
of property ; " — that is to say, the protection of money 
monied, money got. With this party, there is no Abso- 
lute Right, no Absolute Wrong, Instead thereof, there 
is Expediency, and Inexpediency. There is no law 
higher than the power to wield money just as you will. 
Accordingly, a millionaire is reckoned by this party as 
the highest production of society. He is the Whig 
ideal ; he alone has attained " the measure of the 
stature of a perfect man." 

Singular to say, most of the great public charities of 
America have been founded by men of this party ; most 
of the institutions of learning, the hospitals and asylums 
of all kinds. Drive out Nature with a dollar, still she 
comes back. 

But man is man, can a dollar stop him ? Forever ? 
The instinct of development is as inextinguishable in 
man as the instinct of perpetuation in blackbirds and 
thrushes, who build their procreant nests under all 
administrations, theocratic, democratic. So there is 
another party which represents the Majority of the 
people ; that majority who have not money which is 
coveted, only the covetous desire thereof. This repre- 
sents the acquisitive instinct of the people -, not acquired 
wealth ; not money monied, but money moneying, — 
peciinia pecunians, to state it Latin-wise. This is the 
Democratic party. It loves money as well as the Whig 
party, but has got less of it. However, with all its love 
of money, it has something of the momentum of the 
nation, something also of the instinct of mankind. 

To the Whig party belong the rich, the educated, 
the decorous \ the established, — those who look back, 



33 



and count the money got. To the other party belong 
the young, the poor, the bold, the adventurous, every- 
body that is m want, everybody that is in debt, every- 
body who complains. The audacious are its rulers ; — 
often men destitute of lofty character, of great ideas, of 
Justice, of Love, of Religion — bold, smart, saucy men- 
This party sneers at the rich, and hates them ; of course 
it envies them, and lusts for their gold. It talks 
loudly against oppression in all corners of the world, 
except our own. The other party talks favorably of 
oppression, and shows its good side. 

The Democratic party appeals to the brute will of 
the majority, right or wrong ; it knows no higher law. 
Its statesmanship is the power to enact into permanent 
institutions the transient will of the majority : that is 
the ultimate standard. Popular and unpopular, take 
the place of right and wrong — vox populi, vox Dei ; 
the vote settles what is true, what right. It regards 
money made and hoarded as the foe of human progress, 
and so is hostile to the millionaire. The Whig calls on 
his lord, " Money, help us ! " To get money, the Dem^ 
ocrat can do all things through the majority strength- 
ening him. 

The Catholic does homage to the wafer which a baker 
made, and a celibate priest addressed in Latin : it is to 
him the body of the Catholic God. The Protestant 
worships the Bible, a book written with ink, in Hebrew 
and Greek, "translated out of the original tongues, 
appointed to be read in churches." To him it is the 
word of God, the Protestant God. In the same way 
the Whig party worships money : it is the body of the 
Whig God ; there is no higher law above it. The Dem- 
ocratic party worships the opinion of the majority : it 
3 



34 



is the voice of the Democrat's God : there is no higher 
law. To the Whig party, — no matter how the money 
is got, by smuggling opium or selling slaves, — it is 
pecimia pecuniata, — money moniecl. To the Democratic 
party it is of no consequence what the majority wishes, 
or whom it chooses : Polk is as strong as Jackson, — 
when voted in ; and Pierce as great as Jefferson, — for 
office makes all men equally tall. Once the Democracy 
manfully protested against England's oppressing Amer- 
ican sailors — but refused to protect a colored sea- 
man ; — and now it basely protests against America 
making any black man free. Once it went to war — 
righteously, perhaps, for aught I know — in order to 
take a Marblehead fisherman out of a British ship, 
where he had been wickedly impressed. Now the same 
Democracy covets Cuba and Mexico, and seeks to make 
slaves out of millions of men, and spread slavery every- 
where. If the majority wants to violate the Constitu- 
tion of America and the Declaration of Independence, 
or the Constitution of the Universe and the Declaration 
of God, why ! the cry is — " there is no higher law ! " 
" the greatest good of the greatest num])er ! " — What 
shall become of the greatest good of the smaller number ? 
There is, therefore, no vital difference between the 
Wliig party and the Democratic party ; no difference in 
moral principle. The Whig inaugurates the Money 
got; the Democrat inaugurates the Desire to get the 
money. That is all the odds. So in the times that try 
the passions, which are the souls of these parties, the 
Democrat and the Whig meet on the same Baltimore 
platform. One is not higher and the other lower ; they 
are just alike. There is only a hand rail between the 
two, which breaks down if you lean on it, and the par- 



35 



ties mix. In common times, it becomes plain that a 
Democrat is but a Whig on time ; a Whig is a Demo- 
crat arrived at maturity; his time has come. A Demo- 
crat is a young Whig who will legislate for money as 
soon as he has got it; the Wliig is an old Democrat 
who once hurrahed for the majority — "Down with 
money ! that is a despot ! and up with the desire for it ! 
Down with the rich, and up with the poor ! " The 
young man, poor, obscure, and covetous, in 1812 was 
a Democrat, went a-privateering against England ; rich, 
and accordingly " one of our eminent citizens," in 
1851 he was a Whig, and went a-kidnapping against 
EUen Craft and Thomas Simms. 

Bedini's hand is " thicker than itself with brother's 
blood." Young Democrats very properly burnt him in 
effigy. Old Democrats, wanting to be President, took 
him to their hearts. The young ones wdll also grow up 
in time to honor such future Xuncios of the Pope. I 
once knew a crafty family which had two sons ; both 
men of ability, and of remarkable unity of " principle." 
The family invested one in each party, and as it had a 
head on either side of the political penny thrown into 
the air, the family was sure to win. A New England 
Family, wise in its generation ! 

Now, I do not mean to say that all Democrats or all 
Whigs are of this way of thinking. Quite the contrary. 
There is not a Whig or Democrat who would confess it. 
The majority, so far as they have convictions, are very 
different from this ; but the Whig would say in his 
convention, that I told the truth of the Democratic 
party ; the Democrat, in his convention, would say, I 
told the truth of the Whigs. These ideas, — they reside 
in the two parties, as botany in this camelia, as chem- 



36 



istry in the water, as in the drop the gravitation which 
brings it to the ground : not a conviction, but a fact. 
Each of these parties has great good to accomplish. 
Both seem indispensable. Money must be looked after. 
It is a valuable thing ; the human race could not do 
without property. It is the ladder whereby we scale 
the heavens of manhood. But property alone is good 
for nothing. The will of the majority must be respect- 
ed. I honor the ideas of the Democratic party, and of 
the Whig party, so far as they are just. But man is 
not made merely for money ; the majority are the 
standard of power, not of Right. There is a law of God 
which directs the chink of every dollar ; it cannot roll 
except by the laws of the Eternal Father of Earth and 
Heaven. What if the majority enact iniquity into a 
statute ! Can millions make Wrong right ? Justice is 
the greatest good of all. 

With little geographical check or interference from 
other nations, we are going on solving our problem 
of " manifest destiny." Since the establishment of In- 
dependence, America has made a rapid development. 
Her population has increased with unexampled rapidity ; 
her territory has enlarged to receive her ever greaten- 
ing family ; riches have been multiplied faster even 
than their possessors. But some of the least lovely 
qualities of the Anglo Saxon tribe have become dread- 
fully apparent. We have exterminated the Indians ; 
we keep no treaties made with the red men ; they 
keep all. The national materialism and indifierence to 
great universal principles of Right shows itself clearer 
and clearer. Submission to Money or the Majority is 
the one idea that pervades the nation. There are few 



37 



great voices in the American cliurclies which dare utter 
the Eternal Justice of the Infinite God and rebuke the 
wickedness of the nation, or talk as vv^ith a trumpet 
Come up higher. We have taken a feeble tribe of men 
and made them Slaves ; we kidnap the baby newly 
born ; tear him from his mother's arms, sell him like 
swine in the market; the children of Jefferson and 
Madison are Slaves in the Christian Republic. The 
American treats liis African victims with the intensest 
scorn. Even in Boston, spite of Constitution and 
Statute Law, they are ignominiously thrust out of the 
common school. The Clergy are the anointed defend- 
ers of Slavery. The Whig party loves Slavery as a 
tool for making money; the Democratic party, how- 
ever, has the strongest antipathy to the African, and 
uses him for the same purpose. How many great 
American politicians care for him ? 

To obtain any considerable office in America, a man 
must conciliate one of these two — the Money power 
or the Majority power. But the particular body which 
sways the destinies of the nation, or its politics, is an 
army of Slaveholders, some three hundred thousand 
strong. They direct the money ; they sway the major- 
ity ; and are the controlling force in America. They 
have been so for more than sixty years. I cannot now 
stop and weary you with showing how they acquired 
the power, and how they administer it. 

In the history of mankind, this is the first attempt to 
found a State on the natural rights of man. It is not 
to be supposed that there should be national unity of 
action on so higli a platform as that which the genius 
of Adams and Jefferson presented for the people then 
militant against oppression. There is a contradiction 



38 



in the consciousness of the nation. In our industrial 
civilization, under the stimulus of love of wealth, and 
its consequent social and political power, we have made 
such a rapid advance in population and riches as no 
nation ever made. The lower powers of the under- 
standing have also had a great development. We can 
plan, organise, and administer material means for mate- 
rial ends, as no nation has ever done. But it is not to 
be supposed that any people could pass all at once from 
the military civilization, with its fourfold despotism, to 
an industrial civilization with democracy in its Church, 
State, Community, and Family. How slowly we learn; 
with what mistakes do we come to the true Idea, 
and how painfully enact it into a deed ! But see what 
results have come to pass. 

In 1776, there were about 784,093 miles of territory ; 
now there arc 3,347,451. Then there were about two 
and a half millions of people ; now there are four and 
twent}^ In 1790, the annual revenue of America was 
less than four millions of dollars. Last year it was 
more than sixty-one. Then we had less than 698,000 
Slaves ; now we have more than 3,204,000. In 1776, 
Slavery was exceptional ; the nation was ashamed of it. 
In 1774, Mr. Jefferson had more democratic and Christ- 
ian ideas than all Virginia has now. He said, " The 
abolition of domestic Slavery is the greatest desire of 
the American people." In the first draft of the Dec- 
laration of Independence, he condemned England for 
fastening Slavery upon us, forbidding us to abolish the 
Slave trade. He trembled when he remembered that 
*' God is just." The leading men of the nation disliked 
Slavery on principle. Some excused themselves for 



39 



it, — "England forced it on us;" some thought it 
" expedient as a measure ; " all thought it wrong as a 
principle. 

During the Revolution, the white Slaves who had 
been soldiers, became free ; there has not been any white 
Slavery — of the old kind — since '76. I know some 
families in this city whose parents came to America as 
Slaves — white Slaves, I mean. They were bought in 
England ; they were sold in America -— sold under 
cruel laws. I should not like to mention their names ; 
but in 1850, they were the most desperate Hunkers 
that could be found. Born of Slaves, the iron had 
entered their contaminated souls, and they sought to 
enslave your brethren and my parishioners. These 
were the children of white Slaves. The Indians were 
set free by laws. In most of the States, attempts 
were made to free the blacks. All the New England 
States set them free ; — partly by the programme 
of principles in their Constitutions ; partly by the de- 
cisions of Courts ; partly by statute law, enacted by 
the Legislature. New York, New Jersey, Pennsylvania, 
soon followed. In twelve years after the Declaration 
of Independence, seven of the thirteen States had begun 
efforts to abolish Slavery forever. The truths of the 
Declaration, carried forward New England and other 
Northern States ; nay, the momentum of the Revolution 
carried the whole of Congress forward, and ere long, 
America performed two great acts, restricting Despot- 
ocracy — establishing Freedom and not Bondage. Here 
they are. 

I. In 1787, the General government had jurisdiction 
over the North Western territory, and decreed that 



40 



therein Slavery should never exist, to all time, save as a 
punishment for crime " duly convicted." On that spot, 
there have since grown up five great States; Ohio, 
Indiana, Illinois, Michigan, and Wisconsin. Five great 
States, with four ^and a half millions of men, and not a 
Slave. Near a million children went to the Schools of 
those States last year, and there is not a Slave. Out of 
239,345 square miles, there is not an inch of Slave soil, 
except what stands in the shoes of Senator Douglas 
and his coadjutors. That is the first thing. 

II. In 1808, America abolished the Slave trade. 
Before that it was carried on from the harbors of New 
England ; Boston, Bristol, Newport, New York, added 
to their wealth by enslaving men. These were the 
great ports whence men cleared for Africa, to take in 
a cargo of Slaves. It is still carried on from New York 
and Boston — but secretly ; then it was openly done. 
Some of you, whose hoary heads dignify and give a 
benediction to this audience, may perhaps remember the 
Great Rhode Island Slave-trader, who occasionally visited 
this city, and if your eyes ever saw him, I know that 
your hearts — then hot with youth — recoiled with in- 
dignation at such a sight — a stealer of men! He 
seemed to be born for a Slave-trader ; he had a kidnap- 
per's name on him at his birth. He was called Wolf! 

These are the two acts of the Federal government 
against Slavery since the Declaration of Independence. 
That is all that America has done against vSlavery, in eight 
and seventy years. She has multiplied her population 
ten fold, her revenue fifteen fold, and has abolished the 
Slave trade, and prohibited Slavery in the North Western 
territory. Now see what has been done in favor of 
Slavery. 



41 



I. This is the first step : in 1787, America inau- 
gurated Slavery into the Constitution. 

1. She left it in the Slave States, as part of the " Re- 
publican " Institutions. 

2. Next, she provided that the owners of Slaves 
should have their property represented in Congress, five 
Slaves counting the same as three Freemen ; and, at 
this day, in consequence of this Iniquitous Act, for the 
3,204,000 Slaves which she has stolen and unjustly 
holds, the South has delegates in Congress equal to the 
representation of almost two millions of Freemen in 
New England. 

3. It was agi'eed, also, that Slaves escaping from the 
service of their masters into a Free State, should not 
thereby recover their freedom, but should be " delivered 
up." 

Here were three concessions made to Slavery at first. 
They were at variance with the programme of principles 
in the Declaration ; the programme of purpose in the 
Constitution's Preamble. They were known to be at 
variance with the religion of Jesus in the New Testa- 
ment ; at variance with the law^s of Nature and of God. 
The Convention was ashamed of the whole tiling, and 
added hypocrisy to its crime : it did not dare mention 
the word Slave. That was the first great step against 
Freedom. It has cost us millions of people. We 
should have had a population counting millions more. 
It has cost us hundreds of millions of money. The 
Whig is poorer, the Democrat has a smaller majority. 
Aye, it has cost us what is worth more than both 
money and human life — it has cost manhood ; it has 
caused us crime, falseness to our nature and our God. 
Just now the '' Christian Republic " commits a greater 



42 



offence agcaiiist the fundamental principles of all moral- 
ity, all religion, than the Russian or the Turk, or any 
Pagan despotism in the wide World ! 

How came it ? The North wanted a special privilege 
of Navigation ; and it let Slavery into the Constitution 
for that pitiful price. Mr. Gorham, a representative 
from Massachusetts, a Boston man, in the Convention, 
declared that Massachusetts wanted Union, not to de- 
fend herself, she could do so, and had done so, and had 
defended others along with her ; but she wanted a spe- 
cial privilege to trade. I am ashamed to confess it, that 
was the Massachusetts which had just come out of the 
Revolutionary war. Here was a "compromise" be- 
tween the covetousness of the North, wanting a special 
privilege of navigation, and the idleness of the South 
wishing to eat but not to earn. Between these two 
millstones the African man was crushed into a Slave — 
a mere chattel " to all intents, constructions, and purposes 
whatsoever." That was the first step. 

II. In 1792, America admitted Kentucky as a new 
State, made out of old soil, and established Slavery 
therein. That was the first act of Congress establishing 
new Slavery so far as she had power. Since then, America 
has thrice repeated the experiment; — in 1796, estab- 
lishing Slavery in Tennessee ; in 1817, in Mississippi ; 
and in 1819, in Alabama — three new States made 
afresh out of old Slave soil. That was the second step. 

III. In 1793, America adopted Slavery as a Federal 
Institution; undertook herself, the Federal government, 
to seize and deliver up the Fugitive Slave. She took no 
such charge of other fugitive " property." She was not 



43 



Field-driver for horses and mules, only the Hog-reeve fof 
fugitive men, " endowed by their Creator with certain 
unalienable rights," " to life, liberty, and the pursuit of 
happiness." That was the tliird step; and the great 
^^ Expounder of the Constitution" declared it was "whol- 
ly unconstitutional;" every free man, who thinks with 
a free mind, I am confident will say the same. 

IV. In 1803, Louisiana was purchased from France 
and organised into a territory, with Slavery in it. This 
was the first attempt of America to carry the hateful insti- 
tution upon new soil, acquired since the Declaration- of 
Independence. In 1812, Louisiana was admitted as a 
State with Slavery in it; the first Slave State made 
out of new soil, acquired after the Declaration. Hither- 
to Slavery had been confined to- the Atlantic slope of 
the continent; in 1792, the Federal government es- 
tablished it in the vaUey of the Mississippi ; in 1803, 
for the first time, she carried it West of the great river. 
That was the fourth step. 

V. In 1819-20, Missouri was organised as a State ; 
in 1821, admitted with Slavery in it. Before this 
time, Slavery had receded from the North. On the At- 
lantic, it did not reach up to the fortieth parallel of lati- 
tude ; on the Mississippi, it sunk below the thirty- 
seventh. But by admitting Missouri, it all at once rose 
to the fortieth parallel of latitude. Here, however, 
there was a great battle. The South wanted Slavery 
to extend all the way from the Gulf of Mexico to 
the British line. The North wanted to restrict Slavery 
by the Mississippi river, and not carry it West. A few 
Northern men were bought up ; nothing is more market- 



44 



able than Northern politicians, Whig or Democrat, it 
makes no odds, both are lieges of the Almighty Dollar. 
Wickedness prevailed ; Missouri came in with her 
Slaves. However, there was a " Compromise ; " - — the 
celebrated Missouri Compromise, by which Slavery was 
restricted in the Louisiana territory North of 36" 30'. 
Then, all the territory South thereof was made over to 
that institution. In 1836, Arkansas was organised as 
a territory, and came in as a State with Slavery. In 
the territory of Louisiana, bought in 1803, there are 
now 423,172 Slaves. That was the fifth step. 

VI. In 1845, Florida was admitted as a Slave. 
State, with a Constitution providing that the " General 
Assembly shall have no power to pass laws emancipat- 
ing Slaves," or to forbid emigrants to bring their 
Slaves with them. Here, Slavery was extended over 
territory acquired for that purpose from Spain in 1819 
-21 ; made perpetual therein. It went down to the 
Gulf of Mexico, reaching far in. That was the sixth 
step. 

VII. In 1845, Texas was "re-annexed" and admit- 
ted as a State. This was territory whence the Mexicans 
had banished Slavery. Slavery was in the Constitution 
of Texas ; was carried West of the territory purchased 
of France, and spread over 326,520 square miles. It 
was established in a territory forty-three times greater 
than Massachusetts, by and by to be carved into more 
Slave States. This was the first time that America 
had ever established Slavery in a land whence any 
government had positively driven it out. That was 
the seventh step. 



45 



VIII. In 1848, at the conclusion of the war for plun- 
dering Mexico, by conquest and treaty, we acquired 
California, Utah, and New Mexico — a. territory of more 
than 596,000 square miles. This was coveted as new 
ground for the extension of Slavery. The Mexican war 
was begun and continued for Slavery ; the land was to 
be Slave soil. This was the first time we had conquered 
new land in battle for the sake of putting Slavery on it. 
That was the eighth step. 

IX. In 1850, you remember the cry, '' The Union is 
in danger ! " — How lustily men roared : '^ The Union 
is in danger!" — How the politicians talked, and the 
ministers ! The " pedlars of oratory" took the stump. 
You remember the " Boston eloquence " that screamed, 
and tottered and stood a tip-toe, .and spread its fingers, 
and tore its hair, and invaded the very heavens with its 
scary speech ; — "The Union is in danger — this hour!" 
The celebrated Compromise measures were passed. 
So far as it concerns this question, they consisted of the 
Fugitive* Slave Bill — of which I do not think you 
wish me, at least, to speak again ; of the establishment 
of a territorial government in New Mexico and Utah, 
extending Slavery over 407,667 square miles, — a ter- 
ritory larger than fifty-three States of the size of Mas- 
sachusetts ; it paid Texas ten millions of money as a 
gift to Slavery. 

That was the greatest step of all since Slavery was 
inaugurated in the Constitution. It was the most 
insulting to the North ; it was most revolting to our 
political ideas and the principles of our professed reli- 
gion. You remember the stir, and tumult, and storm. 
You have not forgotten the promise that "agitation 



46 

was to cease." In 1852, the Whigs decided to " dis- 
countenance " agitation; and the Democrats, being 
stronger and more audacious, declared that they would 
resist all attempts to renew the agitation on the ques- 
tion of Slavery, in Congress or out, in whatsoever 
shape. That was the ninth great step. 

In 1776, African Slavery existed in all the thirteen 
States. In a few years it shrunk Southward. In 
1790, the end of Delaware in 40° was its Northern At- 
lantic limit ; on the Mississippi, it fell away to less than 
37°. Below the snaky line which separates Delaware, 
Maryland, Virginia, and Kentucky, on the South, from 
New York, Pennsylvania, and Ohio, on the North, East 
of the " Father of Waters,"* on the Atlantic slopes of 
the continent — the monster had scope and verge 
enough. North and West of these limits he dared not 
show his head. But in that year, America bought of 
Maryland and Virginia a field " ten miles square," as 
Capital of the United States ; in 1800, the seat of gov- 
ernment was transferred from Philadelphia to the Dis- 
trict of Columbia ; in 1802, Congress reenacted the Slave 
codes of Virginia and Maryland, extending them over 
the Capital of the nation. Behold the Federal govern- 
ment of the sole Christian Republic of the world has its 
head-quarters on Slave soil 1 Congress had gone South 
— ominous change ! Since that day, no State has abol- 
ished Slavery. It still exists in the six old States : 
Delaware, Maryland, Virginia, North Carolina, South 
Carolina, and Georgia. It has spread into Kentucky, 
Tennessee, Alabama, Mississippi, four new States, in 
twenty years made out of the territory of the old 
States, It has been put anew into Louisiana, ^Missouri, 



47 



Arkansas, Florida, Texas, — five new States made out 
of territory acquired for extending the area of Slavery. 
It has been carried to Utah and New Mexico, — land 
plundered from Mexico for this purpose. The white 
polygamy of Joe Smith, and the Black polygamy of 
men yet more shameless, there flourish side by side. 
It has spread over 1,051,523 square miles, where there 
was no legal Slavery at all in 1788. It has blotted 
the Mississippi Valley with more than 1,580,000 Slaves. 
It has put Slavery in a population of 3,250,303 white 
persons, which else would never have had an entailment 
of this curse upon their property, their education, and 
theii" morality, and their religion ! 

Why was all this ? Has the South the most money, 
and so can buy up the North ? the most votes, and so 
can scare us by overwhelming numbers ? Not at all ; 
the South is poor in money ; in numbers she is weak. 
The North is strong in both. The South wanted Slav- 
ery, the North did not want Freedom for the African. 
Before 1808, Northern clergymen occasionally ventured 
their little savings in the Slave trade : since 1808, 
they obey with alacrity all attempts of the Slave power 
to blaspheme the higher law of God ! At each step, 
the South becomes more imperious, more insulting^ 
She has served us right ! Nine times she has demanded 
a sacrifice — nine times the North has granted the 
demand. In some twenty-four millions of men, every 
seventh man is a Slave ; the children of Jefferson and 
Madison are sold at public vendue. Senator Foote 
roared in the Capitol ; his father's sons were Slaves in 
the same street ! It is " a great country " ; a " Union " 
worth saving ! 

But who is to blame for all this ? The North has had 



48 



the majority in the Federal councils from the beginning. 
It is the North who is to blame for these nine steps — 
for establishing, spreading, fostering, and perpetuating 
the worst institution wherewith the Spaniard has dared 
to blot the Western continent. Who put Slavery in 
the Constitution ; made it Federal ? who put it in the 
new States ? who got new soil to plant it in ? who 
carried it across the Mississippi — into Louisiana, Flor- 
ida, Texas, Utah, New Mexico? who established it in 
the Capital of the United States ? who adopted Slavery 
and volunteered to catch a runaway, in 1793, and 
repeated the act in 1850, — in defiance of all law, all 
precedent, all right ? Why, it was the North. " Spain 
armed herself with bloodhounds," said Mr. Pitt, "to 
extu'pate the wretched natives of America." In 1850, 
the Christian Democracy set Averse bloodhounds a-foot 
to pursue Ellen Craft ; offered them five dollars for the 
run, if they did not take her ; ten if they did ! The 
price of blood was Northern money ; the bloodhounds — 
they were Kidnappers born at the North, bred there, 
kennelled in her church, fed on her sacraments, blessed 
by her priests ! In 1778, Mr. Pitt had a yet harsher 
name for the beasts wherewith despotic Spain hunted 
the red-man in the woods — he called them '■'^ Hell 
Hounds" But they only hunted " savages, heathens, 
men born in barbarous lands." What would he say of 
the pack wliich in 1851 hunted American Christians, in 
the " Athens of America," and stole a man on the grave 
of Hancock and Adams — all Boston looking on, and 
its priests blessing the deed ! 

The Slave Power is now ready to take the tenth step. 
It wants these things: the acquisition of Cuba, the 



49 

Mesilla Valley, the Africanization of Nebraska. Of 
the first and second, I shall not now say anything. The 
third is a most important matter. It is an attempt to 
establish Slavery in a new countiy. First, in a country 
where it never existed to any extent. There is only 
one American in the territory known to have ever held 
a Slave. That is a missionary who went thither from 
Boston, and, for a thousand dollars, bought a man in 
Missouri, to serve as help for his sick wife, — the only 
Slave ever held by an American in Nebraska, so far as 
Senator Douglas is informed ; and of all men the most, 
he ought to know. 

Next, it is an attempt by the Federal government to 
establish it in a territory where it has been prohibited 
by the Federal government itself, by the solemn enacts 
ment of Congress, made thirty^hree years ago, at a 
time Avhen all the North swore solemnly that it would 
not suffer Slavery to come North another inch. 

Do you know what is the population of Nebraska ? 
There are not one thousand Americans in it, There is 
a delegate from Nebraska at Washington. He had 
scvcntf/ Yotes, out of this vast territory! There were 
two competitors, and I suppose there could not have 
been more than two hundred votes cast; I doubt if 
there were one hundred. 

It is an immense territory, 485,000 square mUes ; 
larger than sixty-two States of the size of ISIassachu- 
setts. It contains as much land as all the Thirteen 
States that fought the Revolution, and more than 121,- 
000 square miles besides. Draw a line from Trieste to 
Amsterdam. Nebraska is larger than the part of 
Western Europe thus cut off. It contains more than 
all the Fourteen Free States East of the IVIississippi : — 
4 



60 



Maine, New Hampshire, Vermont, Massachusetts, Rhode 
Island, Connecticut, New York, New Jersey, Pennsyl- 
vania, Ohio, Michigan, Indiana, Illinois, and Wisconsin — 
and 83,393 square miles over and above. It reaches 
from the Western boundary of Missouri to the Ptocky 
Mountains. It extends from 37° North latitude to 49° 
— twelve degrees of latitude ; and from 94° longitude 
to 114° — twenty degrees of longitude. Its waters 
run to the Gulf of Mexico, to the Pacific Ocean, and to 
Hudson's Bay. The blood of the Slave will reach 
" Greenland's icy mountains," and stain the waters at 
the mouth of Baffin's Bay; the Saskatchawan, its 
great Northern river, will drain the Slave soil into Lake 
Winnepeg, and the keel of Captain Kane's ship, return- 
ing from his adventurous quest in the Arctic Sea, will 
pass through waters that are darkened by the last great 
crime of America ! 

The Slave power has long been seeking to extend its 
jurisdiction. It has eminently succeeded. It fills all 
the chief offices of the nation ; the Presidents are Slave 
Presidents; the Supreme Court is of Slave Judges, 
every one ; the district Judges, — you all know Judge 
Sprague, Judge Grier, Judge Kane. In all that 
depends on the political action of America, the Slave 
power carries the day. In what depends on industry, 
population, education, it is the North. The Slave 
power seeks to extend its institutions at the expense 
of humanity. The North Avorks with it. In this cen- 
tury, the South has been foiled in only two efforts : to 
extend Slavery to California and Oregon : nine times 
it has succeeded. 

Now see why the South wishes to establish Slavery 
in Nebraska. 



1. She wishes to gain a direct power in Congress. 
So she wants new Slave States, that she may have new 
Slave Senators to give her the uttermost power in the 
Senate of the United States. 

2. Next, she wishes indirectly to gain power by 
directly checking the rapid growth of the free States of 
the North. If Nebraska is free, the tide of immigration 
will set thither, as once to Ohio, Michigan, Illinois, as 
now to Wisconsin, Iowa, Minnesota. There will be a 
rapid increase of free men, with their consequent wealth, 
education, ideas, democratic institutions, free States, 
with consequent political power. 

All this the South wishes to avoid ; for the South — 
I must say it -. — is the enemy of the North. She is the 
foe to Northern Industry — -to our mines, our manufac- 
tures, and our commerce. Thrice, in my day, has she 
sought to ruin all three. She is the foe to our institu- 
tions ^- to our Democratic politics in the State, our 
Democratic culture in the school, our Democratic work 
in the community, our Democratic equality in the fam- 
ily, and our Democratic religion in the Church. Hear 
what a great Slave organ says of religion : — " The 
Bible has been vouchsafed to mankind for the" purpose 
of keeping us out of hell-fire and getting us into 
Heaven by the mysteries of faith and the inner life — 
not to teach us ethnology, government," &c. It is 
the Editor of the Richmond Examiner who says that ; 
the American Charge at Turin. 

I say the South is the enemy of the North. Eng- 
land is the rival of the North, a powerful rival, often dan- 
gerous ; sometimes a mean and dishonorable rival. But 
the South is our foe, — far more dangerous, meaner, and 
more dishonorable. England keeps treaties ; the South 



52 



breaks faith. She broke faith individually, and Webster 
lies there a wreck on the shore of his own estate ; breaks 
it nationally, " and renews the agitation ! " I always 
knew she would ; I never trusted her lying breath ; I 
warned my brothers and sisters against it : now she 
fulfils the expectation. She is the enemy of our ma- 
terial welfare and our spiritual development. Her suc- 
cess is our ruin. Our w^elfare shames her institutions, 
her ideas, and is the destruction to her " peculiar insti- 
tution." She has been beaten in her effort to blot 
the Territory of Oregon with Slavery ; but she never 
surrenders. This I honor in the South, — she is always 
true to her own institution, and her own idea. I honor 
the man who, on Plymouth Rock, when the sons of the 
Puritans crouched and shrunk down, and scarce one 
brave word could get spoken for . humanity and the 
great rights of man Avhich our fathers brought across 
the sea, — I honor the Southern man who stood up and 
claimed that Slavery should be protected, on Plymouth 
Rock, and told one Northern candidate for the Presi- 
dency that he also had once offered and volunteered to 
shoulder his musket, " the old Middlesex musket," and 
march South to put down an insurrection of Slaves. 
I say, I honor a man's fidelity to his own principle, even 
if it is a base one. 

Such are the two general reasons why the South 
wishes Slavery in tliis new territory. But here is a 
third reason quite special. 

3. There must be communication with the West. 
Three railroads are possible ; one lies through Mexican 
territory, but we have not got it, for the Gadsden 
treaty is not yet a fact accomplished : — two others lie 
through Nebraska territory, One or the other of them 



53 

must be built. If Nebraskca is free soil, the Slave mas- 
ter camiot take his Slave across, for the law of the free 
soil makes the black man free. But if Nebraska is a 
Slave State, then the master can go there and carry his 
« chattels personal" through, — coffles of men, droves of 
women, herds of children, attended by the « missionary 
•from Boston," and the bloodhounds of the kidnapper. 
She wants right of way for her institution ; a Slave rail- 
road from the Mississippi to the Pacific. Such are the 
reasons why she wants to establish Slavery there. 

See what encourages the South to make new en- 
croachments. She has been eminently successful in 
her former demands, especially with the last. The 
authors of the Fugitive Slave Bill did not think that 
enormity could be got through Congress : it was too 
atrocious in itself, too insulting to the North. But 
Northern men sprang forward to defend it — powerful 
politicians supported it to the fullest extent. The 
worse it was, the better they liked it. Northern mer. 
chants were in favor of it — it "would conciliate the 
South." Northern ministers in all the churches of com- 
merce baptised it, defended it out of the Old Testament, 
or the New Testament. The Senator of Boston gave it 
his mighty aid,— he went through the land a huckster 
of Slavery, peddling Atheism : the Representative of 
Boston gave it his vote. Their constituents sustained 
both ! All the great cities of the North executed the 
bill. The leading Journals of Boston advised the mer- 
. chants to withhold all commercial intercourse from 
Towns which opposed Ividnapping. There was a 
« Union Meeting " at Faneuil Hall. You remember the 
men on the platform : the speeches are not forgotten. 
The doctrine that there is a law of God above the pas- 



64 



sions of the multitude and the ambition of their leaders, 
was treated with scorn and hooting : a loud guffaw 
of vulgar ribaldry went up against the Justice of the 
Infinite God ! All the great cities did the same. Athe- 
ism was inaugurated as the first principle of Republican 
government ; in politics, religion makes men mad ! ]Mr. 
Clay declared that " no Northern gentleman will ever 
help return a fugitive Slave ! " What took place at 
Philadelphia ? New York ? Cincinnati ? — nay, at Bos- 
ton? The Northern churches of commerce thought 
Slavery was a blessing, Kidnapping a " grace." The 
Democrats and Whigs vie with each other in devotion 
to the Fugitive Slave Bill. The " Compromises " are 
the golden rule. The North conquered her prejudices. 
The South sees this, and makes another demand. Why 
not ? I am glad of it. She serves us right. 



There is one thing more which helps her. The South, 
weak in numbers, weak in money, has yet a certain 
unity of idea, — that of Slavery. She has the political 
skill to control the money and the numbers of the 
North. She always makes the Presidents. As the 
Catholic priest takes a bit of baker's bread, and says, 
" Bread, thou art, become a God ! " and the dough is 
God, — ^so the South takes any man and transubstan- 
tiates him, ■ — " Thou art a man ! become a President ! " 
And by political transubstantiation Polk and Pierce are 
Presidents, to be '• lifted up," to be " exhibited," set on 
high, and worshipped accordingly. Now the Northern 
lump covets exceedingly this presidential transubstan- 
tiation ; but to attain thereunto it must be of the right 
leaven for the South. A new President is presently 
to be kneaded together, to be baked to the requisite 



55 



hardness, transubstantiated, and then set up in 1856. 
Several old EjjJiraims, alas ! cakes " not turned," begin 
to swell, and bubble, and crack, and break, hoping 
presently to be in condition to be transubstantiated. 
Some Northern dough is leavening itself to suit the 
Southern taste. Alas ! '•' It is not in man that walketh 
to direct his steps." Many are leavened, but few rise. 
A Northern man, a bold adventurer, a bar-room Politi- 
cian of Illinois, born in Vermont, they say, has long 
coveted Presidential transubstantiation. He has tem- 
pered his measures of meal with Southern leaven : he 
is a Slaveholder — not born so ; he courted Slavery and 
" married on ; " he has stirred into hi^ character a 
great amount of appropriate leaven, — the " emptyings " 
of Southern firkins, the leavings of Southern feasts, the 
yeasty scum and froth of the Southern consciousness 
where Slavery heats and swelters and keeps up a per- 
petual fermentation. In 1852, all his leaven was of no 
avail ; even the heat of the Baltimore Convention could 
not make him rise to the requisite degree. Now he 
adds more potent leaven, and drugs his Northern dough, 
hoping the lump will rise a Presidential loaf ! 

Mr. Douglas has made his bid for the Presidency. 
He claims that the Missouri Compromise was abolished 
in 1850. Nobody knew it then; not he himself: it is 
his last discovery. Then he claims that Congress has 
no right to say that Slavery shall not be in the 
territory. 

So the question is, shall we let Slavery into the two 
great territories of Kanzas and Nebraska ? That is a 
question of economy. Here it is. Shall men work 
with poor industrial tools, or with good ones ? Shall 



56 



they have the varied industry of New England and the 
North, or the Slave labor of Virginia and Carolina ? 
Shall their land be worth five dollars and eight cents 
an acre, as in South Carolina, or thirty dollars and a 
half as in Connecticut ? Shall the people all be com- 
fortable, engaged in honest work, which enriches while 
it elevates ,' or shall a part be the poorest of the world 
that a few may be idle and rich ? 

It is a question of political morality. Shall the 
Government be a commonwealth where all are citizens, 
or an aristocracy where man owns his brother man ? 
Shall there be the schools of Ohio, or the ignorance of 
Tennessee ? Shall it be a virtue and a dignity to 
teach, as it is in the public schools of Boston ; a great 
charity, as some of j^ou are administering in private 
schools for the ignorant and poor ; or shall it be a 
crime, as in Virginia, where Mrs. Douglas, by sen- 
tence of Court, is now serving out her time in the 
House of Correction, for teaching a black child its let- 
ters ? Shall there be the public libraries, newspapers, 
lectures, lyceums, of Massachusetts ; or the ignorance, 
the ignoble sloth of Mississippi and Alabama ? Aye ! 
it is a question of domestic morality. Shall a man 
have a right to his own limbs, his liberty, his life ? 
Shall the mother own the babe that is born from her 
bosom ? Shall she be a maid, and keep her innocence 
and her honor ? Shall she be a wife, faithful to him 
that she loves, or shall she be the instrument of a mas- 
ter's lust, who has the law to enforce rape and violence ? 
That is the question. 

It is a great religious question. Shall the passions 
and ambition of base men have rule m Nebraska, or the 
natural law of the most High God? The Unitarian 



57 



Autumnal Convention at Worcester, debated the great 
question, whether men should have a Litany in the 
Churches. The American Tract Society, the American 
Missionary Society, have questions of similar magnitude, 
which come before them. This is not thought a religious 
question. It is only one which concerns the welfare of 
millions of men, in hundreds of years yet to come ; 
aye ! thousands ! The prayer of the Puritan, his self- 
denial, his trust in God, and love of the right, — they 
are the best inheritance New England ever got — shall 
we extend the best institutions of New England to Ne- 
braska; or shall we send there the Slave-driver with 
his whip, with his bloodhound, with his politician and 

his ! shall I say the next word ? I pass it by. 

That question must be answ^ered in a month ; in one 
short month ; aye ! perhaps, in a week. 

In sixty years, Virginia has not doubled her popula- 
tion, while New York has ten times the population of 
1790. The most valuable export of Virginia, is her 
Slaves, enriched by the " best blood of the old dominion ;'* 
the "Mother of Presidents" is also the great SlaA^e 
Breeder of America. Since she ceased to import bond- 
men from Africa, her Slaves become continually paler in 
the face ; it is the " effect of the climate " — and Demo- 
cratic Institutions. One quarter of her Slaves have but 
one-fourth African blood in their veins; half of her 
Slaves are half white. The Ethiopian is changing his 
skin. Beneficent " effect of the climate " — and Demo- 
cratic Institutions ! By the laws of Virginia, it is a crime 
punishable by imprisonment, to deny the master's right 
to hold his Slave ; it was lately proposed in her Legis- 
lature, to exclude from the jury-box all persons guilty 
of this opinion. Her present law provides that men of 



58 



three-fourths white descent shall be free — it is now pro- 
posed to enslave all who have less than nine-tenths Cau- 
casian blood 3 so the blood of " Jefferson and Sally," 
uncontaminated by any new African admixture, must 
pass through yet four other Slave-breeding Presidents 
before it is entitled to freedom ! New York has 862,507 
children at her Public Schools. Virginia makes it a 
crime to teach writing and reading to Slaves. Her 
highest literature is partisan newspapers and speeches ; 
her noblest men are nothing but party-politicians; her 
chief manuficture is Slaves — children of her own Cau- 
casian loins, begotten for exportation. She stocks the 
plantations of Alabama and the bagnios of New Orleans. 
Shall we establish in Nebraska the institutions of Vir- 
ginia? Let the North answer. 

I know Northern politicians say, " Slavery will never 
go there ! " Do they believe their own word ? They 
believe it! In 1820, they said it could not go to Mis- 
souri ; then, there were but 10,222 therein ; now, 87,422 ! 
more than a quarter of all the Slaves in the United States 
are North of 36° 30'. Desperate men from the Slave 
States of the Atlantic and the Mississippi, too miserable 
to reach California, will find their El Dorado in Ne- 
braska, take Slaves there and work their lives out ! It 
will be a better breeding State than Virginia herself 

Congress, it is said, has no right to legislate for the 
people of the territory against Slavery. It must be left 
to the inhabitants thereof. There are 485,000 square 
miles, — not 1,000 men, not two hundred voters. Shall 
two hundred squatters entail Slavery on a country as 
large as all Germany, Switzerland, France, Belgium, and 
Holland ? Is it " democratic" for Congress to allow two 
hundred stragglers in the wilderness, cheating the In- 



59 



dians, swearing, violent, half of them unable to writ^ 
or read, — is it democratic in Congress to allow the?e 
vagabonds of the wilderness to establish the worst 
institution which Spain brought out of the middle ages; 
which Western Europe casts off with scorn ; which Rus- 
sia treads under her feet ; which Turkey rejects with 
indignation, — and spread this over a country larger 
than the whole Roman Empire, when Julius Caesar was 
cradled in his mother's arms ? If it is so, let me go 
back and, 0, most Imperial Nicholas ! let me learn po- 
litical justice from thee, thou last great tyrant of the 
Western world ! 

Suppose we grant this, ^— will that be the end ? Sup- 
pose Slavery flows into Nebraska, — is that all? This 
is the tenth time that Slavery has demanded a great 
Avrong, and the North has said, " Yes, I will do it." Each 
time it has been a greater and worser wrong. Our great 
enemy demands sacrifices, not of interest but of princi- 
ple ; the sacred principle of natural right, allegiance to 
the Eternal God. " Grant it," say they, " or we will 
dissolve the Union." Presently that cry will be raised 
again, " Save the Union ! Oh ! save the Union." " The 
Union is in danger — this hour ! " will be rung again 
in our deceived ears. Suppose it is granted. Only 
once in seventy years has the Southern demand been 
rejected, — when she asked to put Slavery into Oregon. 
But the conscience of the North, — there is not much of 
it, — not enough to act, only to grumble, or perchance 
to swear. The conscience of the North complains. 
" Stop that agitation, or I will dissolve the Union at 
once," says the South. Then the North says again, 
" Hush ! Save the Union ! " and there will not be a 



60 



whisper from Whig or Democrat. The Church has got 
its mean mouth sewed up with an iron thread. 

Then the South will demand again, " Grant us this 
demand, or we will dissolve the Union!" — and the 
same thing goes over and over again. Do you think 
the North fears a dissolution of the Union ? As much 
as I fear that this handful of flowers shall rise and strike 
the life out of my soul. No ! No ! Think not of that. 
Is it love of Country which prompts the Northern sacri- 
fice of conscience? No! never 1 Never, no! It is 
love of the dollar. It is love of the power of the majority, 
of the Slaveholder's power, not love of man, but love of 
money. While the North can make money by the 
Union, there is no danger of dissolution ! 

Grant this, and see what follows. I omit the proba- 
ble acts of individual States, over which Congress has 
no direct control. 

I. The South will claim that the master has a right 
to take his Slaves into a free State — spite of its laws 
to the contrary — and hold them there — first, for a defi- 
nite time, say seven. years ; next, for an indefinite period 
in perpetuity. That will restore Slavery to the North 
and enable the sons of New England to return to their 
native land with their " chattels personal." Perhaps it 
will require no Act of Congress to do this — and " su- 
persede" the Ordinance of 1787, or declare it "inopera- 
tive and void." The whole may be done any day by 
the Supreme Court of the United States ; any day when 
the President shall say, " Down with you, Judges. Do 
as you are bid." Whigs and Democrats can do all things 
through money, which stengtheneth them! will the 
North consent ? Why not, nothing is so supple as the 
Northern neck. 



61 

II. Then the South will seek more Slave territory. 
Here is what is wanted : — a part of Mexico, — the 
Gadsden treaty stipulates for about 39,000,000 acres, 
eight States as large as Massachusetts; Cuba, which 
the Slave power has long coveted ; Porto Rico ; Hayti, 
which the Democratic Christians hate with such bitter- 
ness ; Jamaica and the other West Indies ; the Sand- 
wich Islands ; other parts of the Northern and Southern 
continent. Slavery must be put in all these places. 
Will the North consent ? Why not ? habit makes all 
things easy. What an excellent "field for religious 
enterprise" Hayti would be, if this Republic should 
restore Slavery to St. Domingo 1 Conquer your preju- 
dices ! 

in. Then she will seek to restore the African Slave 
trade. Here are the steps. 1, to authorize any State 
to import Slaves; 2, to authorize any individual to do 
so in spite of the adverse laws of any State which will 
be declared « inoperative and void," or " superseded." 
I can foresee the arguments for the measure — Whig and 
Democratic — Yes, the theological- arguments, drawn 
from the Bible, from " conscience and the Constitution." 
Some future Unitarian Doctor of Divinity, I suppose, for 
a " consideration" will be afraid of a " dissolution of the 
Union" and solve the problem of human destination by 
offering to sacrifice his own brother, sister, wife, daughter, 
mother! Will the North consent ? Why stop at the thir- 
teenth demand and not at the first, at the ninth ? Is it 
worse to steal Northern men in Africa, than Christian 
babies in Virginia ? Worse to steal the son of Pumbo 
Jumbo than the daughters of Jefferson ! Why should 
not the North consent — all the Slaves are to be volun^ 



62 



tary "Missionaries for civilization and Christianity!" 
What is there which the North will not consent to ? 

Some of you may live long enough to see all this. 
The Union has been in danger five times, and five times 
saved by sacrifice of those principles which lie at the 
basis of the nation, and are its glory. Is that too sad a 
prophesy, even to be spoken ? It is not worse for the 
fifty years to come, than for the fifty years past ; it is 
only the history of the last fifty years. 

In 1775, Avhat if it had been told the men all red with 
battle at Lexington and Bunker Hill, — "your sons 
will gird the Court House with chains to kidnap a man ; 
Boston will vote for a Bill which puts the liberty of any 
man in the hands of a Commissioner, to be paid twice as 
much for making a Slave as' for declaring a freeman ; 
and Boston will call out its soldiers to hunt a man through 
its streets ! " What if on the 19th of April, 1775, when 
Samuel Adams said, " Oh ! what a glorious morning is 
this ! " as he heard the tidings of war in the little village 
where he passed the night, — what if it had been told 
him, — "that on the 19th of April, seventy-six years 
from this day, will your City of Boston land a poor 
youth at Savannah, having violated her own laws, and 
stained her Magistrates' hands, in order to put an inno- 
cent man in a Slave-master's jail ? " What if it had been 
told him that Ellen Craft must fly out of Democratic 
Boston, to Monarchic, Theocratic, Aristocratic England, 
to find shelter for her limbs, her connubial innocence, and 
the virtue of her woman's heart ? I think Samuel would 
have cursed the day in which it was said a man-child 
was born, and America was free ! What if it had been 
told Mayhew and Belknap, that in the pulpits of Boston, 
to defend kidnapping should be counted to a man as 



63 

righteousness ? They could not have believed it. They 
did not know what baseness could suck the Northern 
breast, and still be base. 

Who is to blame ? The South? Well, look and see ! 
In the House of Representatives there are 88 Southern 
men- there are 144 from the North. In the Senate, 
the South has 30, the North 32. But out of the two 
and thirty Northern Senators, not twelve men can be 
found to protest against this wicked Bill. The Presi- 
dent is a Northern man ; the Cabinet has a majority 
from the North ; the Committee of Senators who report- 
ed this Bill has a majority of Northern men ; its Chair- 
man is a Northern man. 

The very men who enacted the Fugitive Slave Law 
turn pale ; but what do they do ? They do nothing! 
Where is the North? Where has it been these fifty 
years back - at the feet of the South. Where are the 
Northern ideas - where is the Northern conscience, the 
Northern right ! 0, tell me, where ? Is it in your Legis- 
lature ? Listen! See if you can hear any fuint breath- 
ino;s of the great Northern heart, that fought the war of 
Independence. At least, it is in the Cities. Listen ! In 
Boston the " great men" who control Church and State 
— they have called Conventions, have they ; prepared 
resolutions - got them ready ^ had preliminary meet- 
incrs-have they? Nothing of it. There is not a 
mouse stirring amongst them. It is all right, I suppose, 
in the little towns ? There is the Northern heart - a 
great conscience, that says, "Give me Liberty or give 
me Deathi" — " Resistance to tyrants is obedience to 
God ' " Listen to Massachusetts ! Can you hear any- 
thing ^ Well, I am a Minister. It is in the P^lpts of 
the North, perhaps. Hark! The Bible rustles, as that 



64 



Southern wind, heavy with Slavery, turns over its leaves 
rich in benedictions ; and I hear the old breath come up 
again — "Thou shalt love thy neighbor as thyself " — 
" Inasmuch as ye have not done it unto one of the least 
of these my brethren, ye have not done unto me." Is 
that the voice of the pulpit ? 0, no ! That is the voice 
of a Hebrew peasant; a poor woman's son; nobody knows 
who his father was. In his own time, they said " He hath 
a devil." They hung him as a '-blasphemer," an "infidel." 
That is not the Pulpit's voice. Listen again. Here it is: "I 
would send back my own mother." That is the answer 
of the American Pulpit. Eight and twenty thousand 
Protestant Ministers ! The foremost sect of them all 
debated, a little while ago, whether it should have a 
Litany, and on what terms it should admit young 
men to the conimunion table — - allow them to drink 
"grocers' wine," and eat "bakers' bread," on the 
" Lord's day," in the " Lord's house ; " and never dared 
to lift that palsied hand, in which was once the fire and 
blood of Channing, against the world's mightiest sin. 
Eight and twenty thousand Protestant ministers, and 
not a sect that is opposed to Slavery ! 0, the Church ! 
the Church of America ! False to the great proph- 
ets of the Old Testament, the great world's Prophet of 
the New; false to the fathers whose bloody knees 
once kissed the Rock of Plymouth \ 

The Northern conscience, the Northern religion, the 
Northern faith in God — where is it ? Is it in the 
midst of the people — the young men and the young 
women ; in your hearts and in my heart ? Let us see. 
Let our actions speak. Now is the time ; a month 
hence may be too late ; aye, a week, and the deed may 
be done. Let us, at least, be manly, ai>d dd our part. 



65 

Well let us contend bravely against this wicked 
device of men who are the enemies alike of America 
and Mankind. I call on all men who love man and 
love God, to oppose this extension of Slavery. Talk 
against it, preach against it, print against it — hy all 
means, act against it. Call meetings of the Towns to 
oppose it, of the Congressional districts, of the State, 
yea, of all the Free States. Make a fire in the rear of 
your timid servants in Congress. Let us fight manfully, 
contesting the ground inch by inch, till at last we are 
driven back to the Rock of Plymouth. There let us 
gather up the wreck of the Old Ship which brought 
over the three churches of Plymouth, Salem, Boston, — 
whose children have so often proved filse, — therewith 
let us build anew our Mayflower, make Plymouth 
our Delft-haven, launch again upon the sea, sailing to 
Greenland or to Africa,— l)y prayer to lay other deep 
foundations, and in the wilderness to build up the 
glorious liberty of the sons of God. 

But we shall not toil in vain. Slavery is nothing. 
It exists only by a whim. Theocracy is nothing, Mon^ 
archy is nothing, Aristocracy nothing. America has 
no '-Pope," no " King," no " Noble ; " a breath unmakes 
them as a breath once made. Slavery is no more if 
we say it; the monster dies. In one day the North 
could annihilate aU the Slavery which depends on the 
Federal Government — abolish it on the Federal soil, 
the Capital, and the Territories ; abolish the American 
Slave Trade, declare it piracy, or other felony. That 
would be only common legislation. The next day we 
could abolish it in the Slave States. That would be 
Revolution. 

5 



66 



America has one great enemy — Slavery, our dead- 
liest foe. Do you believe it is always to last ? I tell 
you no ! 0, Young America ! are you sure there is no 
law liigher than love of money and power ? sure there 
is no Justice ? no God ? Quite sure of that ? Men 
have sometimes been mistaken who reckoned without 
that Host. 

PoHtical economy is against Slavery ; it is a poor tool 
to work with. Compare Kentucky and Ohio, Virginia 
with Pennsylvania and New York ! Do you believe that 
shifty Americans will always use the poor rude instru- 
ment of the savage ! They love riches too well. How 
weak Slavery makes a nation ! In time of war how 
easy it would be for the enemy to raise up the 385,000 
Slaves of South Carolina against the 283,000 whites ! 
Where would then be the " chivalry " of that mediaeval 
State ? 

Slavery hinders the education and the industry of 
the people ; it is fatal to their piety. Think of a religious 
kidnapper ! a Christian Slave-breeder ! a Slave-trader 
loving his neighbor as himself, receiving the "sacra- 
ments" in some Protestant Church from the hand of a 
Christian Apostle, then the next day selling babies by 
the dozen, and tearing young women from the arms of 
their husbands, to feed the lust of lecherous New 
Orleans! Imagine a religious man selling his own 
children into eternal bondage ! Think of a Christian 
defending Slavery out of the Bible and declaring there 
is no higher law, but Atheism is the first principle of 
Republican government ! 

" Slavery is the sum of all villainies ; " what can 
save it ? Things refuse to be mismanaged forever. All 
the world is against us. It is only in America that 



67 

Slave-trading, Slave-breeding is thought Christian and 
Democratic. Mr. Slatter who had become rich by trad- 
ing in the souls of men, and famous for preserving the 
Union, in his Slave-pen at the Capital of the Christian 
Republic, once entertained the President of the United 
States at his costly house in Baltimore; — I forget 
whether it was Southern Mr. Polk, or Northern Mr. Fill- 
more ; Slavery has thrown down the partition wall 
between Whig and Democrat. What European Despot 
would have eaten salt with a man whose business was 
to sell misery by the wholesale, and to retail the agony 
of women? Even the mediaeval Pope, the slave of stronger 
despots, who appropriately sends us his red-handed Bedi- 
ni, to be lauded by aspirants for the Presidency — would 
shrink from this. No Russian despot has his sons as 
Slaves to wait on him at table. You must come to 
America to find a Cossack President who could boast 
that honor ! Do you believe this wickedness is always 
to continue? Can the Anglo Saxon become Spanish? 
New England like Bolivia, Peru, Laguira, Mexico? 
The wheels of time turn not back. We cannot break 
the continuity of human history. See how mankind 
marches towards freedom, each step a Revolution. See 
what has been done in 400 years, for the freedom of, 
man in Italy, France, Germany, Switzerland, Holland 
or even in Spain! Lay down your ear to the great 
deep of Humanitv, and hearken to the ground-swell 
which goes on therein. That roar of mighty waters, 
does it whisper security to the tyrant? The next 400 
years what shall it do against Theocracy, Monarchy, 
Aristocracy, Despotocracy 1 

See what the Anglo Saxon in Europe has done for 
freedom since the first James! Compare the England 



68 



of 1854, with the EngkiTid of 1604. What a growth 
of liberal institutions ; of freedom in the people ! Eng- 
land loving liberiy, loving law, goes on still l)uilding 
up the Cyclopiean walls of Humanity, the Bulwark of 
Freedom for mankind. See what the same Anglo 
Saxon has done in America. Compare the Colonies of 
1754, with the States of 1854. What a progress ! 
Are we to stop hero ? 

See what Massachusetts has done. Slavery was 
always a contradiction in the consciousness of New 
England. So in 1641, Massachusetts enacted that 
" there shall never be any bond Slavery, villanage, or 
captivity amongst us, unless it be lawful captives taken 
in just wars," &c. In 1646, the Colony bore "witness 
against the heinous and crying sin of man-stealing," and 
restored to Guinea some captives wickedly taken 
thence. But yet Slavery existed, and cruel laws 
afflicted its victims. Listen to the following. In 1636, 
" it is ordered that no servant shall be set free — until 
he have served out the time covenanted : " that " when 
any servants shall run away from their masters .... it 
shall be lawful for the next magistrate, or the constable 
and two of the chief inhabitants where no magistrate 
is, to press men and boats or pinnaces at the public 
charge, to pursue such persons by sea or land, and 
bring them back by force of arms." In 1703, a law 
forbade negro, mulatto, or Indian servants or Slaves 
" to be found abroad in the night time after nine 
o'clock." Ihey were "to be openly whipped by the 
constable." If a negro or mulatto should strike any 
person of the English, - - he was to be " severely 
whipped at the discretion of the Justices." In 1705, a 
duty of four pounds was levied on each Slave imported, 



69 



and a drawback allowed in case he was " exported 
within the space of twelve months." ]^.Iarriage between 
white and black was illegal ; a fine of fifty pounds pun- 
ished the ofiicer who joined the parties. It is not a 
hundred years since Slaves were sold in Massachusetts, 
Children were torn from their parents. The charms of 
young women were advertised in the public print. In 
less than a hundred years, two Slaves were burned alive 
on Boston Neck for poisoning their master. Now jMas- 
sachusetts has torn these wicked laws from her Statute- 
book. It is only Boston which turns a black boy out 
of her Public School. Do you think the Northern men 
love Slavery, the people love it ? In all the parties 
there are noble men who hate American Slavery. They 
know it is a wdcked thing ; they despise their politi- 
cians who seek to perpetuate it, and loathe the pur- 
chased Priests who justify the iniquity in the name of 
God ! Each of the nine sacrifices to Slavery has been 
unpopular at the North. Only the politicians approved 
them. The Constitution was adopted with difficulty. 
New England hated its inauguration of Slavery'- as a 
power in the Republic. The Fugitive Slave Bill of 
1793 — wdiy, even Washington did not venture to pur- 
sue his Slave by its authority and seize her. She w^as 
safe even in the native State of Webster and of Pierce ! 
The ".lexican War was unpopular. It was not "with 
alacrity" that the North obeyed the wicked act of 1850. 
Boston saw her saddest day when she kidnapped Thomas 
Sims. It could not be done but with chains round the 
Court House, Judges crawling under, and a regiment of 
flunkeys billeted in Faneuil Hall. If the question of 
the enslavement of Nebraska were this day put to the 
vote of the people, in nineteen-twentieths of all the 



70 



towns of the North, nineteen-twentieths of the voters 
would say No. The people are right, tJiou-gh, alas, not 
very earnest. There are a few politicians, also, who 
hate Slavery. There are noble ministers of all sects 
save the Catholic, true to their high calling, honoring 
the great Philanthropist they worship, who hate Amer- 
ican Slavery, and preach against it in spite of the Phar- 
isee, the Sadducee, and the Hypocrite, who thereupon 
tighten against the minister the strings of the Parish 
purse. I have no words to tell how much I honor such 
men ! True ministers of Christ, they put the churches 
of commerce to continual shame. I never knew of a 
Catholic Priest who favored freedom in America ; a 
Slave himself, the mediaeval theocracy eats the heart 
out from the celibate JMonk ! 

Slavery is one great enemy of America, but there is 
one other foe — corrupt politicians filibustering for the 
Presidency, defending Slavery out of the Kew Testament, 
volunteering to shoulder their musket and shoot down 
men claiming their unalienable rights ; politicians who 
deny God's Higher Law, who call upon us to conquer our 
prejudices against wickedness, inaugurating Atheism as 
the first principle of Government. In 1788, they put 
Slavery into the Constitution ; in 1850, they enacted in- 
iquity into Law ; and in 1854, they are about their old , 
work " saving the Union." Shall such men always pre- 
vail ! the mediaeval Catholic against the free minister of 
piety! The corrupt politician filibustering for office 
against the people — the American idea in their heads, 
and Humanity in their hearts ! Even the Catholic shall 
learn. 

Slavery must die. See how Monarchy withdrew in 
front of White Hall in 1648 ! How Slavery disap- 



71 



peared from Saint Domingo in 1790 ! Shall American 
Slavery end after that sort, or as it ended in New Eng. 
land ; as Old England put it down in Jamaica ? Down 
it must. God does not forget. His Justice is wrought 
into the world's great heart. See what changes 
perplex the monarchs of the world — with what strides 
Mankind goes forward ! The fourth tyrant must follow 
to the same tomb with the rest. It is for you and me 
to slay him ! 

Half a million immigrants annually find a shelter on 
our shores. " Westward the star of empire takes its 
way." Aye, it will come Eastward — and Asia already 
begins to send us her children. What a noble destina- 
tion is before us if we are but faithful. Shall politicians 
come between the people and the eternal Right — be- 
tween America and her history ! When you remember 
what our fathers have done ; what we have done — 
substituted a new industrial for a military state, the 
self-rule of this day for the vicarious government of the 
middle ages ; when you remember what a momentum 
the human race has got during its long run — it is 
plain that Slavery is on the way to end. 

As soon as the North awakes to its ideas, and uses 
its vast strength of money, its vast strength of num- 
bers, and its still more gigantic strength of educated 
intellect, we shall tread this monster underneath our 
feet. See how Spain has fallen — how poor and misera- 
ble is Spanish America. She stands there a perpetual 
warning to us. One day the North will rise in her 
majesty, and put Slavery under our feet, and then we 
shall extend the area of freedom. The blessing of Al- 
mighty God will come down upon the noblest people the 



72 



world ever saw — who have triumphed over Theocracy, 
Monarchy, Aristocracy, Despotocracy, and have got a 
Democracy — a government of all, for all, and by all — 
a Church without a Bishop, a State without a King, a 
Community without a Lord, and a Family without a 
Slave. 



NOTE 



This Discourse is printed mainly from the phonographic report of 
Messrs. Yerrinton ani Leighton. — .March 7th, 1854. 




iil 



